The Tarrif switch time functionality is applied when a subscriber switches form one tarrif plan to another.

The Tariff-Time-Change AVP is used to determine the tariff switch time, and the Monitoring-Time IE is used to support the Tarrif Time support functionality.

After a tariff timer expiry, the Gateway accumulates the usage separately in a charging bucket and continues to consume from the original quota value. At the time of next reporting, (Quota exhausted or another control events) the Gateway will report both usages (before and after tarrif time change) for the same Charging Bucket.

The first reporting of this charging-bucket will have the Reporting-Reason: Tariff-Time-Change, and the second bucket will contain the last reporting reason, and the quota usage after the tariff-timer expiry.

The data traffic usage can be split into resource usage before a tariff switch and resources used after a tariff switch. The Tariff-Change-Usage AVP is used within the Used-Service-Units AVP to distinguish reported usage before and after the tariff time change.

Limitations

Following are the known limitations of this feature:

• Only one tariff time per RG/Service ID combination is supported.

• Allocation of different quota before and after tariff time change is not supported. This functionality is not in compliance with the 3GPP stanadards.