SMF Inline Services

The SMF uses the Inline Services feature such as the Enhanced Charging Service (ECS) that enables operators to reduce billing-related costs and gives the ability to offer tiered, detailed, and itemized billing to their subscribers. Using shallow and deep packet inspection (DPI), the ECS [also known as Active Charging Service (ACS)] allows operators to charge subscribers based on the actual usage, number of bytes, premium services, location, and so on. The ECS also generates charging records for postpaid and prepaid billing systems.

The following features are related to this use case: