[clug] broadband ISPs in Canberra

[Steven Hanley]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2004 at 02:38:45PM +1000, Kim Holburn wrote:
> I have heard it said that 60% or more of the equipment in a telephone 
> exchange is for billing.  If you can handle all that and more in 
> software it cuts the cost considerably.  Now if you took away telephone 
> traffic charges how much more simple does that make the system?

That 60% thing would not really surprise me. Alex Satrapa or Martijn van
Oosterhout can probably back me up on this. Looking at the way traditional
phone companies do their billing (Telstra, AAPT, Optus, etc) it is amazing
how inflexible it is and how much human intervention is required on top of
the complexity in their billing systems in the software that handles calls.
Moving things in to software as Kim suggests does indeed allow one to cut
costs tremendously, using generic computers and well written software to
habndle huge amounts of data extracted from some simpler hardware just makes
sense I imagine.

	See You
	    Steve

-- 
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linux.conf.au 2005 - Canberra - April 18-23 2005
http://linux.conf.au - The Australian Linux Technical Conference