Much work is being done with Communication Service Providers (CSPs) globally to transform their networks and businesses to fully take advantage of 5G, monetizing their investments and opening the doors to delivering innovative and commercially sustainable service experiences.

Regardless of the service, use case, business model or technical make-up of a CSP's network, a scalable, flexible, multidimensional charging system is the crucial component of monetizing the network. With standards set out in 5G 3GPP Service-Based Architecture, the Charging Function (CHF) acts as a point of consolidation for all online and offline, pre-paid and post-paid rating and charging requests. Its ability to manage complex requests, and its native familiarity with 5G Standalone (SA), means its value is felt uniquely as a catalyst for positive transformation and evolution of 5G service delivery. In addition to its dedicated charging system, Ericsson Charging, Ericsson also supports CSPs with 5G charging through implementations of the charging function in other Ericsson solutions.

This quality has been seen reflected in Ericsson's charging capabilities popularity with customers, as well as its commercial success. With Ericsson Charging and the other products, services and solutions in Ericsson's Business and Operations Support Systems portfolio, the company supports over 3 billion subscribers worldwide – and around 25 percent of the world's total subscribers are charged by Ericsson. The analyst house Analysys Mason has also recently noted Ericsson as a leading vendor in this area with 8% share in the total market revenue for 2023 for charging, rating, and policy management market worldwide.

To date, out of the 50 signed contracts, 20 of these customers are now live with the CHF provided by Ericsson in their commercial 5G networks to monetize 5G at scale. It is empowering a range of CSPs on every continent to build and transform their network capabilities.

• One of Ericsson Charging's largest implementations is a North American Tier 1 CSP which implemented cloud-native online charging at massive scale, enhancing 5G services for over 150 million subscribers
• With Airtel India, Ericsson implemented its integrated policy and charging solution, consolidating all other OCS by migrating more than 70M customers to Ericsson Charging, making it a sole solution serving 350M+ customers across India, future-proofing it and preparing it for 5G monetization
• Ericsson has recently signed a deal to secure a three-year renewal contract with a large, continental scale CSP to deploy its cloud-native, microservices-based Charging Access Function (CAF) as part of the Ericsson Charging solution expanding the solution to cover multiple regions

These successes are a small selection of the projects underway globally with CSPs such as Orange France, stc KSA, Orange Jordan, WIND Hellas, WINDTRE and e& UAE

Mats Karlsson, Head of Solution Area Business and Operations Support Systems, Ericsson, says: "This milestone is a testament of the work we do in close collaboration and partnership with service providers to transform their networks as they evolve to fully take advantage of 5G. We celebrate this achievement of 50 5G Charging customers as it is testament to the great progress our customers have made to monetize their business by capturing and securing revenue from traditional telecom services as well as digital services, 5G and IoT."

While the charging functionality is a vital and important part of a CSP's monetization model, it is still part of a wider set of capabilities that work in concert to deliver revenue, manage costs and complexity and flex to adapt rapidly to changing demands and service creation needs. An adaptable 5G-ready charging system needs to support new charging trigger points as services and use cases evolve (including for IoT), manage lifecycles for mass IoT devices and huge numbers of individual subscriptions, manage multiparty charging involving hierarchies and charging "on behalf of" arrangements as well as non-telco service charging such as API monetization use cases. With the other elements of the Monetization portfolio, Ericsson Charging is a powerful partner for CSPs at any scale for sustainable revenue capture and generation.