ROUTING MANUAL
Table of Contents:
2.2.1 Entering the New Destinations for a Carrier
2.2.2 Entering the Codes for an Already Existing Destination
2.2.4 Activating/Deactivation/Movement of Codes for a Destination
2.2.5 Multiple Activation/Movement/Deactivation of Codes
4.2 How Does Arbinet Make Money?
4.4 Updating Arbinet rates in TM
Chapter 5 - NOC Calls and Trouble Tickets Handling
5.1 Gateway and Carrier Monitoring
5.4 NOC calls and trouble tickets handling
5.10 Low ACL inbound/ Low ASR inbound
Retail Countries Ownership
8.2.1 IMS CDRs by CSSIDs(Generic)
8.2.4 Wholesale calls by incoming carrier
8.2.5 All wholesale calls/number
8.2.7 NTS CDR Query: Calls by Number
8.2.8 Rating Engine QA: Abnormal Outbound CDR Details
8.2.9 Rating Engine QA: Abnormal Wholesale CDR Details
8.3 Deactivating a carrier procedure
8.4 Failed calls mails explanation
8.5.1 What are the countries considered by AR ?
8.5.3 What countries are considered to be routed from the AR countries ?
8.5.4 How the route changes are decided ?
8.5.6 Quality View Calculation/Updating
Chapter 9: Emergency Procedures
9.1. 800 Number Down Procedure
In general, phone service via VoIP costs less than equivalent service from traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) service providers.
VoIP has become a major provider of phone services to travellers, migrant workers and ex-pats, who either, due to not having a fixed or mobile phone or high overseas roaming charges, choose instead to use VoIP services to make their phone calls. Pre-Paid phone cards can be used either from a normal phone or from Internet Cafes that have phone services.
Long distance calling works like any other business, where you buy something at wholesale cost, then resell it to customers, at a higher price, to make a profit. We set prices for our customers to each destination, so we HAVE to route traffic at a lower cost than what we sell for. Changing routes is a daily activity which keeps us in control of the rates we pay, and the quality of our service.
A route is the path a call takes from after it hits our switch. We control the "paths" that all of our calls take, and when one of these "paths" goes down, or gets too expensive, we have to change it.
Our business has 2 major components: retail and wholesale. Retail means customers buying our cards and using them for long distance calls. Wholesale means voice traffic with other carriers. A carrier is a telecommunications company with whom we are interconnected and can terminate our voice traffic in which case we call it an outbound carrier, or we terminate its traffic and we call it an inbound carrier. Some carriers we use just for outbound traffic, some just for inbound and others for both.
Retail and wholesale traffic are terminated on separate partitions. The purpose of route "partitioning" is to give us the ability to control the routing. It means different carriers may be selected to route different types of traffic for the same destination.
The rates/codes entering/modifying process is handled by the WS Pricing group within our Carrier Division team. But routing guys still need to understand how to operate with these tools as well. We might not enter rates for an entire carrier but we still need to update Arbinet every time we put a bid on the website and also we need to know how to maneuver codes for our Custom codes trunk group which is very helpful for the Country ownership.
Our carriers send us rate amendments any time they make a change in what they charge us for a certain destination. They will come through an efax or an excel spreadsheet, and will all contain the destination, the country/city code for that destination, the date of change, and the new rate. This information needs to be entered into our database (Nobel Tel), so we will always be up to date with what our carriers are charging us. An example of a rate amendment would look like this:
|
Country |
US Dollars |
Effective Date |
Country Dial Code |
|
|
0.1445 |
|
549 |
|
|
0.0099 |
|
5411 |
|
|
0.0210 |
|
54351 |
|
|
0.1245 |
|
6107 |
|
|
0.1245 |
|
611 |
|
|
0.1245 |
|
614 |
|
|
0.1245 |
|
615 |
|
|
0.0425 |
|
1242 |
|
|
0.0772 |
|
8801 |
|
|
0.0800 |
|
229 |
|
|
0.0540 |
|
1441 |
|
|
0.1255 |
|
387 |
If a carrier decides to send us a rate for a new destination (one we don't currently have a rate for), we need to attach the new destination to the carrier through Nobel Tel. We can do this through "Rate Sheet Functions".
To get here, you need to first select "Rate Sheets" from the menu in the upper left hand corner.
Next step is to select "Rate Sheet Functions" from the column on the left hand side of the page. This will give you the rate sheet options.
From here you select "Associate Special Trunk Group with Country" from the rate sheet options. This will take you to a screen where you can associate any destinations you want, to a certain carrier.
Once you select the countries you wish to add for the carrier (you can select as many as needed using CTRL+left mouse click), you hit "Associate" button, and the selected countries will be a part of that carrier database.
Different carriers have different codes for the same destination. To enter codes for an already existing destination in our database you need to go to "Rate Sheets" from the menu in the upper left hand corner.
Next step is to select the county
from the left. (Let's say
From here you have to click on the name on the carrier. A new window will pop up.
Now you will click "Add a Code", enter the code, enter the date when that code will become effective and select the destination that the code belongs to and hit "Add Code" button.
Some carriers will break out different cities, or special services than other carriers. We call these special codes, since they do not match our default destinations or codes.
After going to Rate Sheet select the destination you need to enter special codes for from this menu, and it will open the rate view for that particular destination. This page shows the global breakouts' rates for the selected destination. It also shows all of the carriers we can send traffic to.
To enter a special code, you need
to first select the carrier who has the special code. The example will be
Worldnet breaking out
Entering a special code is the same as above with one difference. After you click on "Add a Code", you enter the code, the effective date, select "Create a special ratezone for it", and a field where you can enter the name of that special ratezone will appear. After entering the name of that ratezone, you hit "Add Code" button.
That way the special ratezone and the code for it will be in our database.
To view all the codes for a destination load the Code View for that specific country:
Code Activation
To activate a previously deactivated code, you click on the code and this window will pop-up:
From here you can set the date from which this code will become activated and press Activate Code.
Code Deactivation
It's useful because you can set the date from which the code will become "unavailable". The codes that are deactivated will no longer appear on any page from TM, except for the Code View page (this is very good because you load in the routing views only the codes that are needed and are valid, thus fastening your work).
To deactivate a code, you must click on the code from the Code View for the corresponding carrier (this assuming that the code it's active!). Codes being active can be seen in the upper part of the table, they have in the left side, on the first colon written the destination name or special (special is for those codes that are in special rate zones).
From here is the reverse of the activation procedure, you set the codes deactivation date and click Deactivate Code.
Movement of Codes:
As you might have observed in the Code Deactivation picture, you have also the possibility to move codes, this is the second way you can move a code, what is better in this "second option" is that you can set the date when this movement will go through.
You just select in the "To" where the code will be moved, and the Starting Date of this movement. Then you click on Move Code and that's it, the code will be moved on the specified date to the specified zone.
Some times you may come across of activating/deactivating/moving more than 1 code for the same destination. A feature was implemented to help this thing.
In "Code View", in the same cell with the carrier name, you can find a "M" button similar to the one in the "Routing View". With the help of this button you can see all the Active/Deactivated codes for that carrier.
Hitting the "M" button above the MCI (614) will open a new pop up:
The options you will find in this window are the ones already displayed; I will describe them one by one as it follows:
Active Codes: by selecting this you will get to see all the active
codes for that destination from the selected carrier. The destination and the
carrier information are displayed in the top of the window. (ex: Update Codes
for Country Proper 376 And Trunkgroup 614 - meaning: Update codes for
Deactivated Codes: same as the Active codes option, just that it displays the deactivated codes.
Codes: these are the active/deactivated codes on which you can perform various functions, in order to select a code, just check the box corresponding to it.
Ratezone: from this combo-box you can select the rate zone to which you want to move the code(s). This will be used only when moving codes or when activating codes.
Date: here you can specify the date from which activation/deactivation/movement will occur. Will be used in all cases.
Move button: as the name suggests, you move the codes selected by pressing this button. Will only be available for the Active Codes selection.
Deactivate button: you deactivate the selected codes by pressing this button. Will only be available for the Active Codes selection.
Activate button: you activate the selected codes by pressing this button. Will only be available for the Deactivated Codes selection.
If you want to enter a rate for a carrier (most of the times Arbinet) go to that country for which you want to enter the rate (Rate View) and click on the desired carrier on top of the page:
In the opened pop up you have to click on "All Ratezones"
From here you have to click on the rate you want to change and a new pop-up window will appear:
Here you can enter the rate, the effective date and then click "Add Rate".
The rate will be entered in the database immediately.
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