Why is it important for MVNOs to reconcile wholesale and retail events?

In the world of telecom, systems are not always perfect, and unexpected issues can lead to financial losses for both MNOs and MVNOs. We experienced such a situation a few years ago with one of our MVNO clients at MVNOanalytics.

To monitor discrepancies, we developed a report that compared the minutes billed by the MNO at the wholesale level with those charged by the MVNO to subscribers at the retail level. While small variations of less than 0.25% were common due to minor factors, we noticed something unusual—a discrepancy of about 1% occurring over a couple of weeks.

A 1% discrepancy might seem negligible, but upon investigation, we discovered that three international destinations had been misconfigured in the billing platform, allowing subscribers to make free calls to these, unfortunately expensive, locations. The result? A €7,000 loss for the MVNO.

This experience taught us a valuable lesson. Now, we conduct reconciliation at the country level for all international calls, investigating even the slightest mismatch.