What an open source BSS solution has to cover
A business support system is everything between "the customer signed up" and "the money is in the bank": the product catalogue, the customer account, the order, the subscription, the usage it generates, the invoice and the payment. Most operators end up stitching these together from separate products. OpenBRM keeps them in one open source platform with one database, so a plan change, a rated call and a payment all land on the same customer record.
| BSS function | How OpenBRM covers it |
|---|---|
| Product catalogue & pricing | Products, plans, one-off and recurring charges, tiers and discounts. Product bundling |
| Customer & account management | Customer hierarchies, billing accounts and a built-in CRM with quotes, tickets and notifications |
| Order & subscription management | Activation, upgrades, downgrades, plan changes and cancellation with provisioning hooks. Subscription management |
| Rating & mediation | OpenRate parses CDRs (delimited, fixed-length, TAP, ASN.1) and rates in batch or real time. Rating engine |
| Resource inventory | SIM cards, MSISDNs, modems and IP pools linked to subscriptions. Inventory manager |
| Billing & invoicing | Subscription charges, rated usage and one-off fees on a single invoice per billing cycle |
| Payments & collections | Gateway plug-ins, direct debit and bank integrations. Integrations |
| Self-service & digital sales | Storefront checkout that creates the account and starts billing. Self-service storefront |
An all-in-one BSS platform and BSS billing system
Billing is the core of OpenBRM rather than an add-on, so it works both as a BSS billing system and as complete BSS software. That makes it an all-in-one BSS platform: one database and one upgrade path instead of separate products for the catalogue, CRM, rating and invoicing.
Why an open source BSS platform
- No licence fee. Download the full source and self-host it; you pay only for the servers you run it on and any help you choose to buy.
- An open schema. OpenBRM runs on PostgreSQL, so reporting tools and your own applications can read billing data directly.
- Open APIs. Customers, products, invoices, payments, billing runs and mediation are available through the SOAP API, orders and subscriptions can be read through it, and the API domains line up with TM Forum Open API entities (see what TMF Open API means for a billing platform).
- No lock-in on who supports it. Run it with your own team, or have Saralam Technologies implement and support it.
Who uses an open source telecom BSS like this
Teams comparing BSS solutions for telecom: mobile operators and MVNOs, internet service providers, VoIP providers, utilities, logistics operators and subscription businesses. It fits best where you need telecom-grade rating and inventory but a full enterprise BSS suite would be more cost and footprint than the business needs. If you are weighing it against a commercial suite, see how OpenBRM compares with Oracle BRM.
An MVNO billing platform
MVNOs use OpenBRM as their MVNO billing platform. CDRs from the host network are rated by the rating engine, SIM cards and MSISDNs are tracked in the inventory manager, and prepaid and postpaid plans bill from the same catalogue. The services team also handles MVNO enablement.
Extending it for your business
No two operators charge in quite the same way, so the platform is built to be extended without forking it. Meta fields add your own data to customers, products, orders, invoices and payments. The plug-in system lets you replace one specific step, such as how a product is priced or how a payment is processed, with your own logic. Because those changes live in configuration and plug-ins rather than in a modified core, they carry forward when you upgrade. Reporting works the same way: billing exports and account summaries can be produced as Excel files, and customer emails come from templates you can edit.
Getting it running
Download the package and follow the documentation to install and produce a first invoice, or ask for a hosted trial account. You can run it as a hosted BSS platform or self-host it on your own servers. For a production rollout, the services team handles implementation, integration and MVNO enablement.