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CREATE A 'TELECOM' ANALYTICAL ACCOUNTING ENVIRONMENT, IMMEDIATELY AND INEXPENSIVELY, WITH ICTNETSIM

Establishing an analytical cost accounting is a prerequisite for competitiveness for any economic operator that faces competition.
It is never an easy task.
The complexity and evolving nature of the telecommunication network makes the task even more difficult for service providers officiating in that sector.
ictNetSim (Versatile Simulator of Telecommunication / ICT Networks and Services)  was designed to allow any  telecommunication networks operator to develop very quickly and inexpensively, a highly accurate analytical cost accounting.
It suffices to adapt the coding or cost centers as well as coding of fixed assets and integrate them in the procedures for making entries in general accounting system.
ictNetSim takes it over from that point.

ictNetSim is made available to the market since November 2010 only. Until then two kinds systems were operated by both operators and regulators by:

1.     "Proxy" type of systems based on the following principles:

a.     Estimating the operation costs of the network that supports the services the cost has to be calculated. This estimate is based on the yearly accounting results of the operator;

b.    Estimating CAPEX (annualized using depreciation). Sometimes at this stage we try a model of prices of major telecommunications infrastructure (often in the form of simple linear equations) and that we invoke a "coefficient of technological progress" in order to transform the historical cost into current cost;

c.     In estimating the OPEX and CAPEX we distinguish as much as possible the direct costs, indirect costs identifiable to one or more services with a view to minimizing the proportion of costs not classifiable elsewhere than among the common costs;

d.    Estimating annual traffic volume of the services we wish to calculate the cost;

e.     Estimation of the  routing factors by mechanical counting of the number of times a type of telecommunications infrastructure is traversed by a given service and weighing by traffic volumes;

f.     Allocation of costs to services using  routing factors or  other distribution keys, the terms "calculating the increment" are sometimes used at this stage;

g.    Division of the total cost of the service by the annual volume.

2.     more sophisticated systems based on network engineering and on the following principles:

a.     Estimating the operation costs of the network that supports the services the cost has to be calculated. This estimate is based on the yearly accounting results of the operator;

b.    Estimating CAPEX (annualized using depreciation). Sometimes at this stage we try a model of prices of major telecommunications infrastructure (often in the form of simple linear equations) in order to establish, for each type of telecommunication infrastructure a price list  reflecting if possible the most advantageous technology known

c.     In estimating the OPEX we distinguish as much as possible the direct costs, indirect costs identifiable to one or more services with a view to minimizing the proportion of costs not classifiable elsewhere than among the common costs;

d.    Based on traffic demand (in erlang) found in circuits trunks (or communication channels),a broken traffic matrix is ​​developed. This is subsequently used in the one hand to calculate

the  routing factors through the technique of  average incremental resource calculation and  

to estimate more precisely the volume of traffic of each service in the other hand;

e.     Allocation of costs to services using to  routing factors  or other allocation keys;

f.     Division of the total cost of the service by the annual volume.

3.     ictNetSim belongs to the second class of systems with the following improvements:

a.     Calculation of OPEX: ictNetSim provides more accuracy because it is capable of incorporating the accounting plan of the country and to import and process all the entries from the perspective of a full cost allocation to existing cost centers or cost centers created to serve the pricing exercise;

b.    Calculation of CAPEX: ictNetSim can go very far in the description and coding of capital investments, be them linked to the corporate structure or to network infrastructure. This gives to ictNetSim a considerable advantage when it comes to updating the investment and avoid the use of an arbitrary coefficient called "technological". Regulators can, if desired, estimate the cost of infrastructure as shown in 2b) above, operators may, in turn, calculate very accurately their current price;

c.     Unlike tariff models known so far, ictNetSim uses a holistic approach that allows it to simulate all the activities of an operator, should it operates one or more networks, that it shares its infrastructure with other operators or not, that its networks are circuit-switched or packet switched;