. A common billing term is CDR (call detail record). The CDRs are sent to the billing mediation platform for reformatting (required if different vendors have different formats of the CDRs). See Figure 16.21. CDRs are also sent to data warehousing for further analysis of customer telecom habits etc. See Section 16.7.2 below. The information received is processed to generate the actual bills. It can also be sent out directly to the customer for billing purposes. This feature is known as hot billing. Hot billing enables itemized call-charging information to be sent to, for example, a teleshop as soon as the call is finished. For calls passing through different operator networks, billing information is also used by the accounting function regulating the flow of money between the operators. Operator business process: O&M output Corporate strategy Financial planning Marketing Market Services Infrastructure Build and Operation content services planning implement maintenance creation Billing and customer Figure 16.20 Revenue-related management Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business Information from network fault management Customer Front help Custom orderser trouble ticketing Other Hot billing operators Call rating & Payment Customer order Tariff plan Inter-operatori billing management management management accounting Data warehouse - Fraud detection - Calling analysis Billing mediation platform Collection of relevant events - etc. for billing in the network Router Server Figure 16.21 Billing mediation It is worth mentioning the existence and discussion of two different philosophies regarding billing, as illustrated in Figure 16.22. The type of control, already treated in configuration management, also has important effects in terms of telecom business. The use of pure call control or pure connectivity control in the network has important effects on billing methods and philosophy, as can be seen in Figure 16.22. Connectivity-based technologies like IP have had limited capabilit