The purpose of Billing4Rent is to perform pan-European validation of an Application Service Provider (ASP) hosted billing service for lower tier telecommunications operators, Internet Service Providers, eGovernment and other genres of service providers. By definition an ASP hosted solution will have a trans-European dimension; however, many aspects of the solution need to be validated for internationalisation and localisation. The solution also offers a revolutionary price comparison service that allows European citizens to compare service usage costs between competing providers.

The Billing4Rent consortium has analysed, designed and implemented a highly innovative billing solution for communications providers. The solution, realised using ASP technology, enables tier 3 and 4 network operators, content providers, service aggregators and other types of service providers to access state-of-the-art billing functionality on a subscription/rental basis. Despite clear market demand from small and entrant providers, there is no similar service currently operational. This can be attributed to the fact that there are significant barriers inhibiting the realisation of such a solution. These include the huge amount of intellectual property embedded in incumbent billing vendors commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products and the major technical challenges that need to be addressed to support a scalable, secure and robust ASP-based solution that can be effectively used by personnel with limited technical expertise.

The Billing4Rent Consortium has identified a unique and innovative way of overcoming these barriers. The approach harnesses the functionality provided by the market leading Singl.eView product, developed and sold by Intec Telecom Systems PLC. (United Kingdom), which has been enhanced to provide the core of an ASP billing service providing the flexibility, ease-of-use, architecture and business model required by the intended customer base.