The FCS Billing Group’s stakeholders which include the UK’s major billing vendors plus representatives from several large communication providers, voted at their January 28 meeting to accept the Standard 2.0 which will come into effect on the 1st April 2014. Standard 2.0 will coexist with the previous version 1.5 for six months at which point version 1.5 will be withdrawn.
Following a review of the original UK CDR Standard format which was launched in January 2013, the Billing Group identified a number of items that could be improved. This includes adoption of the E.164 international standard for telephone numbers, multiple currency support, and the inclusion of a header row which makes it easier for users to interpret data within the CDR. Several of the definitions have also been revised to make information clearer and less open to ambiguity.
Tony Cook, Chairman of the FCS Billing Group said, “Although we’ve had modest adoption of the Standard format so far, we believe that version 2.0 addresses the primary concerns people have had for not adopting it so far. We strongly encourage all service providers and producers of wholesale CDRs to embrace the UK CDR Standard which is available for download on the FCS’s website.”