[VoiceOps] Billing of Forwarded Calls

[anorexicpoodle]

Look for the presence of a diversion header, if the diversion header is
there, then that is the responsible party. I cannot speak to the
particulars of your platform, but as long as you make sure that if a
diversion header is present it is assigned as the responsible party your
billing should come out correct in this flow. If your switch/endpoint is
not adding a diversion header then I am inclined to agree with Alex.

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 13:01 -0500, Alex Balashov wrote:
> Scott Berkman wrote:
> 
> > So how do most of you deal with billing of forwarded calls (specifically 
> > where the calling number on the forwarded leg is using the original 
> > calling number from the inbound leg) in a SIP environment when the 
> > originally called number is not preserved in the new invite?  In this 
> > case there is no way to match the calling or called number to a specific 
> > customer.
> > 
> > Do you bill by IP address or interface instead?  Do you somehow use a 
> > system that correlates the forwarded leg to the original inbound leg?  
> > I’ve come across this issue a few different times when trying to bill 
> > off of SIP messaging logs, for instance radius off a SIP SBC or SQL logs 
> > from SER.
> 
> In my view, that depends on what is doing the forwarding.
> 
> If it's the customer handset actually initiating the forward, then it 
> should just look like a normal termination call from the customer.
> 
> If it's a multi-tenant switch or other call control agent, it should 
> have some way of associating forwarded calls with an account and 
> sticking an account ID or similar into the CDRs, which will reveal who 
> to bill and presumably the rate plan to use.
> 
> If it can't do that, the product sucks.
> 
> -- Alex
>