TELEPHONE UTILITY BILLING - PLAYING IN THE BIG LEAGUES

Telephone utility billing is the process by which the customer receives an invoice for local and long-distance equipment used and services rendered. Although the process may seem quite simple, the details involved, the organizations participating and the regulatory environment encompassing them make it quite complex. This article gives a brief history of the following: where the United States telephone industry has been; what the transaction flow looked like; how deregulation and the divestiture of the Bell System in the U.S. impacted the industry; where the industry is now; what the transaction flow now looks like; and where we are going in the future.