Wobbly Oystercard charges
 

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 02:13:07PM +0000, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:32:02
on Fri, 28 Jan 2011, David Cantrell remarked:
Hmmph. From *my* time in the phone industry (admittedly this was mostly
wholesale, with some landlines) the billing system can be very flexible
indeed.
Perhaps they should write some better billing software.
They do - for example the whole PAYG platform, rather than monthly
subscriptions, was new. Nevertheless, any billing system needs "levers
to pull" (to implement a fancy new charging scheme[1]) and if they
aren't there, the marketing people have to think again.

Where I work now, those of us who create and run the back-end software
get requirements from the rest of the business, which we then implement.
In EVERY place that I've worked, that is what happens. Marketing (or
whoever) say "we need thus and so", and we say either "OK, it will take
X weeks, you can have it in Whatevermonth", or we say "that breaks the
laws of physics, what do you *really* want?", or we say "that conflicts
with this other requirement, oil up and get in a cage with them and
fight it out".

So the marketing people need to think about what levers they would like
to pull.

Anyway, I've recently been looking at alterantive telcos, cos my O2
contract is up. One of them (I forget which) lets you buy a certain
number of 08expensive minutes a month in advance. It's quite a
reasonable rate, compared to their normal 08ripoff. I suppose that
that's at least a good start.

--
David Cantrell | Minister for Arbitrary Justice

Eye have a spelling chequer / It came with my pea sea
It planely marques four my revue / Miss Steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word / And weight for it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write / It shows me strait a weigh.

Wobbly Oystercard charges
 

In message , at 14:02:14
on Mon, 31 Jan 2011, David Cantrell remarked:
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 02:13:07PM +0000, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:32:02
on Fri, 28 Jan 2011, David Cantrell remarked:
Hmmph. From *my* time in the phone industry (admittedly this was mostly
wholesale, with some landlines) the billing system can be very flexible
indeed.
Perhaps they should write some better billing software.
They do - for example the whole PAYG platform, rather than monthly
subscriptions, was new. Nevertheless, any billing system needs "levers
to pull" (to implement a fancy new charging scheme[1]) and if they
aren't there, the marketing people have to think again.

Where I work now, those of us who create and run the back-end software
get requirements from the rest of the business, which we then implement.
In EVERY place that I've worked, that is what happens. Marketing (or
whoever) say "we need thus and so", and we say either "OK, it will take
X weeks, you can have it in Whatevermonth", or we say "that breaks the
laws of physics, what do you *really* want?", or we say "that conflicts
with this other requirement, oil up and get in a cage with them and
fight it out".

So the marketing people need to think about what levers they would like
to pull.

And that's what they did with PAYG.

The problem with the underlying billing platforms is that they had to be
able to feed bills out to hundreds of tied resellers (remember when
phones could only be bought through them) as well as being able to cope
with the effect the new charging structure would have on interconnect
agreements with a dozen or more other domestic telcos.

Nothing is impossible (within reason) but if it means rewriting the code
then you can't have it by the middle of next week.

Anyway, I've recently been looking at alterantive telcos, cos my O2
contract is up. One of them (I forget which) lets you buy a certain
number of 08expensive minutes a month in advance. It's quite a
reasonable rate, compared to their normal 08ripoff. I suppose that
that's at least a good start.

I wonder if that's a stealth pilot scheme for the proposed "free from
mobile" 0800 scheme OFCOM is consulting about?
--
Roland Perry