Performance of hot billing mobile prepaid service

Prepaid service has become an important mobile application with rapid growt h for subscription rate in the recent years. Implementation of prepaid serv ice may generate large network traffic that significantly affects the perfo rmance of a mobile network. This paper studies the hot billing solution for prepaid service. We investigate how the amount of prepaid credit and the F requency of call detail record (CDR) transmissions affect network signaling and potential bad debt that a service provider may bear. Our study suggest s that a prepaid service provider should encourage customers to buy large p repaid credits by giving them discounts. Furthermore. based on call traffic , an optimal CDR transmission frequency can be found by using our modeling technique. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.