s essential to pro- vide the customer with different rating plans. Customers can be segmented based on: - Geography: The parameters used for this segment include region, popula- tion size, density, and climate. - Demography: The parameters used for this segment include age, family size, income, gender, occupation, education, and social class. - Psychograph: The parameters used for this segment include lifestyle and personality. - Behavior: The parameters used for this segment include evaluation of benefits, analysis of usage rate, and attitude toward a specific product. Different customer segments have different needs and a single rating for all customers will not satisfy customer needs. Service providers are coming up with innovative plans that best satisfy the customer segments. Convergent billing: There would be multiple services from a service provider that a customer would be using. The customer might opt to use broadband internet, IPTV, Call Service, and On-Demand services from a single service provider. These services will be offered as a package by the service provider for a rate that would be less compared to the amount the customer has to pay when these services are subscribed on an individual basis. Rather than separate bills for individual services, the customer wants to get a single bill that details usage for all the subscribed services. For the customer this single bill is easier to track, maintain, and pay. Convergent billing for a package of services is currently offered by most service providers. Ease of understanding: There would be multiple items under a single service for which the customer gets charged. For example, in a simple call service a different rate is applied for interstate call, intercountry calls and international calls. Also special charges are applied for calling specific service numbers. In the first bill from a service provider, in addition to the rate wise breakdown OSS/BSS Functions there would be charges against initial provisioning, equipment supplied, service charges, and