Source: This Press Release was first published by www.c114.com.cn
China, August 15, 2022 - Recently, the blockchain public network "the Settlement Chain" built by China Mobile and China Unicom based on the operator settlement scenarios was officially launched. It breaks the data circulation barriers between operators, realizes cross-chain interworking and sharing of operating subjects’ hyperledgers, and ensures that data is not tampered with and can be reproduced and traced during interactions, making the settlement process more efficient and transparent.
According to released information, the Settlement Chain is jointly designed by China Mobile (China Mobile Information Technology Co., Ltd. and China Mobile Research Institute) and China Unicom (China Unicom Software Research Institute). The network consists of the two parties’ own blockchain platforms. The two parties provide their own accounting and sorting nodes, sign and upload settlement bills that they acknowledge, and use same smart contracts for settlement processing to achieve fair, error-free, automated data exchange, audit, and settlement.
Inter-network Business Settlement in Five Provinces, Saving Tens of Millions of Yuan of Cost
Inter-network communications include voice, SMS, and MMS services. The average monthly volume of CDRs reaches tens of billions, which leads to complex inter-network settlement among operators. In the settlement of traditional inter-network businesses, settlement reports are first generated by the production system of relevant parties and then exchanged offline by business personnel of all the provinces for reconciliation and account adjustment. The process involves a large amount of manual work, causing a high risk of data leakage and tampering. In addition, manual reconciliation is costly and time-consuming. So a new model that can guarantee data security, reduce trust cost, and facilitate retrospective audit is in urgent need to resolve these pain points. The blockchain technology can prevent tampering and allow multi-party participation, which provides a new way to solve the above problems.
China Mobile and China Unicom have always attached great importance to the independent research and development of blockchain technologies. They have their own blockchain brands "CMBaaS" and "CUBaaS", based on which the Settlement Chain is built to realize cross-cloud networking, eliminating the risks of data leakage, tampering, and dispute, and ensuring the security and reliability of data and the consistency of encryption and decryption.
At present, China Mobile and China Unicom have successfully made use of the Settlement Chain for business settlement across the operator networks in Guangdong, Liaoning, Ningxia, Henan and Hebei provinces. In this process, original manual reconciliation is replaced by automatic processing on the smart contract chain of "the Settlement Chain". With the support of blockchain smart contracts, the integrated intelligent operation model of accounting-reconciliation-adjustment-settlement is created, which is expected to reduce the average business time by 60% and save tens of millions of yuan of labor cost every year.
Prominent Business, Technical, and Security Advantages: Fair, Open, Transparent, Credible, and Controllable
It is said that the Settlement Chain is the first large-scale cross-operator blockchain infrastructure in the communication industry. It has the advantages of fairness, openness, transparency, credibility, and controllability in the technology, business, and security aspects, and has endorsement from China Mobile and China Unicom, two major central government-owned enterprises.
In terms of business, it realizes cross-operator end-to-end closed-loop control of data of different provinces, isolates data between provinces, leaves real-time marks for every operation, retains, traces, reproduces, and prevents tampering with transaction data versions, encrypts, uploads, and performs back-to-back automated reconciliation for production data of provincial branches, and tracks transaction status in real time. In the meantime, performance is optimized based on service characteristics, including the business processes, data storage methods, and verification mechanisms, to support the peak traffic. Mechanisms such as highly reliable cluster and data synchronization are adopted to ensure high availability of telecom services.
In terms of technology, the two parties use their own blockchain engines at the bottom layer, and the sorting and the accounting nodes are deployed on the Panji cloud of China Mobile and the China Unicom cloud respectively. The P2P protocol is adopted for communication between nodes, and there is no central nodes, which means that the blockchain network will not be affected if any node falls off the network. The platform is decentralized, and both parties equally manage the settlement chain network based on the CMBaaS and CUBaaS. The smart contracts are also executed in a decentralized way. When clients initiate transaction proposals, the endorsement node is connected for pre-execution of the transactions. Then, the transactions are sorted by the consensus algorithm and synchronized to the billing node for distributed billing. PKI certificate authentication is used between nodes to ensure mutual trust in identity. Nodes without certificates cannot join the blockchain network. Data is encrypted before transfer, and data verification is required to ensure that the data is credible and not tampered with.
In terms of security, it complies with the requirements of the Cryptograph Law of the People's Republic of China and replaces the engine's cryptographic algorithm module with domestic cryptograph to eliminate potential security risks in the cryptographic algorithm and meet the security compliance requirements of key industries. At the same time, following the design principles of the blockchain alliance, China Mobile and China Unicom used their own software platforms, smart contracts, and business logic to build a truly decentralized network, ensuring that data on the chain is open and transparent, and the settlement results are credible and controllable and can be verified. This is fundamentally different from the so-called "decentralized" networking mode in most of today’s application scenarios where multiple parties use the same blockchain platform and the same set of smart contracts, and reflects the values of the blockchain alliance.
Inter-network Settlement Is Only the First Step
Application in More Industries and Scenarios Is Expected
Judging from the current results, the Settlement Chain has effectively changed the traditional liquidation and settlement business modes, and solved the pain points in original inter-network settlement. Next, China Mobile and China Unicom will introduce the network to 31 provincial branches and invite China Telecom, China Broadnet, and other major operators to build new blockchain infrastructures for nationwide application of the Settlement Chain.
For China Telecom and China Broadnet, they can access the Settlement Chain network as organizers and deploy sorting and accounting nodes in their private cloud environments with the consent of the existing members. By then, the Settlement Chain will have four ally members who are on equal footing.
According available information, inter-network settlement is only the first step for the Settlement Chain. In the future, it will be gradually applied to inter-network 5G roaming, IoV roaming, and MNP, bringing more business cooperation opportunities to operators.
In addition, the Settlement Chain can also be widely used in traditional settlement businesses to resolve problems such as slow settlement speed, tedious manual operations, high risk of inconsistency, and low data security in settlement between different entities. By encrypting settlement and reconciliation information and replacing manual reconciliation with smart contracts, the transaction process is made traceable, ensuring transparency of the settlement process, reducing disputes, improving security and credibility, and realizing digital transformation of businesses.
Looking into the future, China Mobile and China Unicom said that they will make the Settlement Chain a bridge between enterprises and industries, and build a new ecosystem for digital operations that links all operators, industries, and scenarios.
