Definition
Geo-Based Pricing (Geographically Differentiated Pricing) refers to configuring differentiated tariffs based on country/region/operator, reflecting network costs, competitive landscape, and market demand in different areas. Supports pricing strategies such as Cost-Based and Market-Based, and works with Tiered Pricing and Rate Card to achieve refined pricing and cost control in cross-border IoT scenarios.
Pricing Dimensions
Typical dimensions of Geo-Based Pricing include: Country/Region — distinguished by MCC and country codes, such as EU, North America, and Asia-Pacific countries; Operator — costs may vary between different MNO s in the same country; Local vs Roaming — significant rate differences between local and roaming networks; Network Type — pricing may vary for 4G, 5G, NB-IoT, etc. The platform needs to attribute usage according to fields such as PLMN in CDR , MCC/MNC, and match the corresponding Rate Card .
Strategy Type
Cost-Based Pricing is based on the operator's settlement cost plus a reasonable margin; Market-Based Pricing refers to local market competitive prices; a hybrid strategy can apply cost-plus in high-cost regions and market-following in highly competitive regions. In cross-border scenarios, roaming rates are usually higher than local rates, and Geo-Based Pricing can guide customers to optimize their Roaming Policy and PLMN Selection to reduce usage in high-tariff areas.
Implementation in ICMP
SimtoLink ICMP supports Geo-Based Pricing: configure Rate Card by country, region, and carrier; integrate with Cross-Border Billing and Usage Aggregation to achieve usage attribution and billing by geography; support Tiered Pricing and Volume Discount stacking; provide Usage Analytics to analyze usage and costs in different regions, supporting pricing optimization.
Which location fields geographic pricing reads
Geographic pricing selects the price from the network location where usage actually happened, not from the customer’s headquarters address. The location fields come from the mobile country code, the mobile network code, and the visited network resolved from them on the detail record. Two operators in the same country can have different prices, so the country alone is not enough. If the contract distinguishes by operator, the network code has to take part in the match. Local versus roaming is whether the visited network is on the list of home networks agreed for this SIM, not a business description of whether the device “went abroad.”
The match finds the rate version in effect at the time of the record. If a version has only “the current price,” last month’s usage that arrives late is rerated at the new price. If the country or the network cannot be found, the record should go to pending, not receive a fallback high price or a zero price that is not written in the contract. If a radio access type is priced on its own, the record also needs that field. Configuring a technology price difference without the field means the system can only refuse to rate automatically.
Conditions for stacking a regional rate with a tier
A regional price and a tiered price can sit together, but the tier’s cumulative base has to be defined first. The base can be usage inside one country, or usage worldwide, and the two cross bands at different speeds. It must be written whether the unit price is chosen by region first and the tier then runs inside that region, or a discount is set from worldwide usage first and then applied to each region’s unit price. If the order is not written, the invoicing program and the customer’s quotation produce two sets of numbers.
Stacking also requires every region to use the same billing period and the same unit of measure. One region in bytes and another in sessions cannot be added into a tier. If a committed-volume discount applies only to the local network, roaming usage cannot help local usage cross a band, and it cannot be covered by the local discount. The version number of the rate card should be stored with the rating result. Changing one country’s price should not rerate other countries’ periods that are already closed. When the structure needs to be seen, use usage aggregation to list usage and amount by country, rather than giving only one discounted total.
Letting a visited-network price overwrite the home plan
When the home plan already includes usage inside the agreed networks, that usage should not be charged again at the visited-network unit price. Overwrite often happens because the rating program sees only the country code and not this SIM’s list of home networks, so it treats the home country as a roaming country too. In-plan traffic is then charged again by volume, and the customer reads geographic pricing as having voided the original plan. The opposite error folds visited-network traffic into the home included volume, and high-cost usage is not priced on its own.
When the operator changes and the country does not, a price table hung only on the country will not reflect the cost change after the network change on the invoice. If records missing a network code are estimated at the country average, the expensive network and the cheap network are smoothed together. At reconciliation the operator settles by network and the platform charges by country, and the difference cannot be split to a SIM. Repair means replaying detail records that carry the network field, matching the version again, and listing the records that were rewritten. Do not multiply the total by an adjustment factor. A country with no price should stop automatic invoicing, and device policy should be stopped from treating that network as selectable by default. Otherwise usage keeps piling up on a network that cannot be priced.
Before a price table is published, run a matching drill: take the previous period’s detail records, run only the geographic match, and do not invoice. See how many records have no country, no network, or hit more than one price. A high share with no country means collection is the problem, not the price list. Multiple hits mean the priority between a country price and an operator price was not written. Priority should be fixed so the more specific rule wins, for example one operator’s price ahead of that country’s general price, and the rule number that hit should be stored on the rating result. Let the new version take effect at the start of a billing period only after the drill passes. A new country price inserted in the middle of a period applies only to usage after its effective time, so two stretches of one session are not left with unit prices that cannot be explained.