Billing Concepts Intros Hotspot Settlement Service

Billing Concepts, Inc. (BCI) got its start when teleco deregulation took place. Itself an offspring of a long distance provider, BCI eventually become a third-party company that would collect fees for things like operator service and distribute the fees as necessary to all the companies and providers involved, no matter who "owned" the end-user's main customer relationship. In the words of Don Philbin, BCI's chief operating officer, "this enabled choice for the end user -- they weren't hostage to a single network anymore."

The company is hoping to bring this same freedom to Wi-Fi end users that want to roam from hotspot to hotspot and only pay one bill. BCI has announced eZ-Wi Wireless LAN Solutions, an independent, brand-neutral clearing and settlement service for wireless Internet service providers (WISPs). The WISPs will continue to run the branding and customer relationship, and collect the actual money from consumers.

"Most of the folks in the industry think the existing wireless data carriers are the heir apparent to the whole [hotspot] industry," says Paul Buehler, director of Corporate Development at BCI. "We think the ISPs are more uniquely positioned to build out hundreds of thousands of hotspots, because they're their now. They've got subscribers, they're in the community, they're looking for additional markets and customers."

eZ-Wi is meant to facilitate the connection between the WISPs and the venue owners/operators where the hotspots are setup. Customers of WISPs that use eZ-Wi can then use any and all venues that are partnered with such WISPs. At the end of the month, BCI handles the settlement of all money issues between the parties, by invoicing the WISP for what's owed and then distributing it to the hotspot venue owners (the venues/WISPs still set their own pricing). While theWISPs still handle their own billing, BCI simply makes sure the WISP's partners get paid. The settlement service does, however, take the venue owners out of the billing business.

End-users will log in with a username and password and are checked against RADIUS server listings at the WISP. The user can sign on to the network. At the same time BCI is also aware of the connection and will do a "contract comparison," checking, for instance, what the WISP charges for roaming and what the venue owner charges for access.

"This isn't a new concept," admits Buehler, "people over the years have suggested this would help the adoption of the industry. We're talking to several major providers and other folks that are highly involved in the industry." BCI would not yet announce any potential customers.

He also stresses that there's no cost involved in this for either the venue or the WISP to participate -- the WISP needs only to sign an agreement for the reimbursement of the venues and agree to point eZ-Wi in the direction of their log-in servers. BCI expects support at the hotspot venues for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) , the minimum level of security it plans to support.