We pinky swear today’s story will be all about the good old days and the awesome people behind the scenes. (And not another AI trend or PortaOne billing simulator.) You’ll even get to help us choose who we spotlight next in our little corporate anthropology adventure. We’ve already told stories about support, documentation, product, devops, employee training, and marketing… But what about our fantastic QA team, application engineers, and the project managers who somehow keep it all together? Drop a comment wherever you see this post, and our SMM crew will pass your vote to the Connector editorial team.
Of course, for all these amazing folks to keep doing what they love — and, you know, feed their families — someone’s got to keep PortaOne sailing toward that big blue ocean of AI-powered disruption that’s shaking up tech and telecom. Lately, that someone has been our CEO, Andriy Zhylenko. He has been deeply immersed in the AI trenches, ensuring we stay ahead of the curve.
How AI Flipped Our CEO’s Calendar (and Freed Him from Code Reviews)
“Back in 2015, a typical workday for me was roughly split 2:5:2 — spending time on strategy, then working with PortaOne teams and customers, and occasionally reviewing code,” Andriy explains. “In 2025, that ratio has shifted to about 4:4:1 — interacting with various AI tools to shape our strategy, still working closely with teams and customers, but with little time left for code reviews.” Thankfully, robots now do most of our code review process, with Andriy doing only limited human oversight (when needed).
To navigate this shift and make sense of how AI could truly enhance (not just buzzwordify) our business, we decided to get our hands dirty and build something practical. That’s how the idea of the PortaOne Billing Simulator was born. (Disclaimer: we are still considering it for production.) While PortaAIM is our attempt to help authors and creators monetize their work within the AI agents ecosystem, the PortaOne Billing Simulator is our experiment for our core customer base. (That’s mid-sized telcos, MVNOs, and UCaaS or CPaaS providers.) That said, as PortaOne increasingly expands into industries beyond telecom, we believe customers in those new sectors may also benefit from billing simulations.
Simulating Reality: From Movies and Games to Cardiology and Launching Space Satellites
How perfectly can reality be simulated? That’s a good question, Anna Wiener asks in her insightful piece for The New Yorker. There, she discusses the story of Epic Games and their ultra-realistic Unreal Engine. Operating with mathematics and abstract business concepts, billing systems are easier to simulate than cinema or computer games. However, the challenge lies not in rendering lifelike shadows or fluid physics, but in accounting for the endless edge cases, evolving regulations, and unpredictable user behaviors that shape real-world billing. A good billing simulator doesn’t just crunch numbers — it stress-tests assumptions, exposes hidden bugs, and helps businesses make more thoughtful decisions before they go live.
Some Healthcare Inspiration for the PortaOne Billing Simulator
A compelling example of a successful simulation that saved a life comes from UC Davis Health. That’s where a pediatric cardiology team utilized virtual reality to simulate a stent placement in a young patient’s heart. By visualizing the patient’s unique anatomy in 3D, the team identified a potential obstruction before the actual procedure. With that knowledge, they could customize their surgical plan.
The Space Case That Inspired the PortaOne Billing Simulator
In the space industry, simulation is indispensable for mission success. NASA’s Operational Simulator for Small Satellites (NOS3) exemplifies this by providing a software-only environment for developing and testing CubeSat missions, such as STF-1. By simulating hardware components and integrating flight software, NOS3 enabled comprehensive testing without the need for physical satellites, thereby reducing costs and enhancing mission reliability. OK, now is this about the PortaOne billing simulator? Is PortaOne inventing a new industry here?
Who Already Did It? Giants, on Whose Shoulders the PortaOne Billing Simulator Is Standing
First, credit where credit is due. Several forward-thinking companies have already explored billing simulations, and we genuinely respect their efforts. Whether it was to reduce deployment risks, improve developer onboarding, or model edge-case billing logic, these solutions paved the way for what we’re building now. They proved that simulation in billing isn’t just viable — it’s valuable! Our goal with the PortaOne Billing Simulator is to build on their foundations while solving the more challenging problems in complex telco, cloud service, EV charging, and AI agents billing environments.
Orb: Beautiful Modeling, but Built for Simpler Worlds
Orb offers elegant billing simulation tools for SaaS companies, featuring a sleek interface and clear use cases for testing new pricing plans and usage models. Their sandbox environments help predict customer invoices and analyze the financial impact of pricing changes. However, as powerful as Orb is for software billing, it stops short of handling the complex hierarchies, conditional logic, and legacy constraints typical in telecom environments. The PortaOne Billing Simulator will build on that idea, offering the same ease of testing but for the more complex, rules-heavy world of telcos. (Where customer hierarchies, usage tiers, and exceptions are the norm, rather than the exception.)
Stripe: Solid Tools for Subscriptions, but Narrow Scope
Stripe’s Test Clocks and Workbench are developers’ dreams for simulating time-based events in subscription billing. It’s a fantastic tool for fast-moving SaaS startups that want to verify invoice timelines, proration logic, and trial expirations without incurring real costs. But again, Stripe’s simulation toolkit is designed for a clean, single-tenant subscription logic model. The PortaOne Billing Simulator picks up where Stripe leaves off. It models complex multi-tenant environments, MVNO hierarchies, edge-case promotions, and even regulatory compliance testing, with the flexibility required in telecom and enterprise software.
SAP: Enterprise Power, but Locked in Complexity
SAP has long offered billing simulation features deep within its ERP ecosystem (see example), typically tied to massive business workflows such as order-to-cash or product configuration management. While undeniably powerful, these simulations often come with steep configuration overhead, rigid integration dependencies, and extensive consulting requirements. The PortaOne Billing Simulator aims to offer the best of both worlds: real-world billing modeling with enterprise-grade logic in a tool that’s nimble and developer-friendly. It doesn’t require a 200-page implementation guide.
Three, Two, One… Kickoff! Our Vision for the PortaOne Billing Simulator
We came up with the idea for the PortaOne Billing Simulator after we watched one of Dmytro’s video. There, he used raw usage data to simulate billing plan changes. That sparked a question: why doesn’t every telco have a safe, structured way to do the same?
The simulator we’re building allows teams to test new pricing models, bundles, or billing logic using real customer history. It shows how revenue would change, where billing might break, and what edge cases could surface. And it does it without touching production systems.
Experiment with Realistic Mock Data
A bit addition is support for generating realistic mock data. This enables integration partners to test billing flows before going live. It’s built for messy, real-world environments — and we’re inviting early adopters to help shape it further. Want to know what happens if you bump a bundle from 8GB to 10GB? Remove an overused add-on? Increase the price for high-usage customers? The simulator enables you to do all this using your historical CDRs. Then, you can compare the simulated revenue against what you actually billed. It’s not a prediction tool; it’s a diagnostic engine. Think of it like a digital twin for your pricing experiments.
Test Profitability Hypothesis with the PortaOne Billing Simulator Before You Launch
Launching a new service or pricing plan without simulating its financial impact is like flying blind in a storm. With the PortaOne Billing Simulator, teams can test different profitability hypotheses… before anything goes live. See how a tiered data plan performs across markets. Find out whether bundling VoIP with cloud storage boosts margins or drains them. Or create whatever scenario you want to test. The simulator provides a safe space to experiment with real billing logic and actual usage patterns, so you can validate ideas and identify potential issues early.
This isn’t just about avoiding mistakes. It’s about making smarter bets. Instead of relying on spreadsheets or gut instinct, you can model your scenarios with live system logic, spot revenue leaks, stress-test edge cases, and fine-tune incentives. Whether you’re a telco launching a new prepaid bundle or a UCaaS provider tweaking enterprise packages, the PortaOne Billing Simulator empowers you to act with confidence (and hard data).
Enable AI-Driven Product Recommendations by Running PortaOne Billing Simulations
We aren’t planning “to steal” Totogi’s fame here. Yet, the PortaOne Billing Simulator can yield interesting results for both: the end user and the CSP or MVNO, willing to recommend the most cost-efficient approaches to those end users. By analyzing simulated usage patterns and pricing scenarios, the PortaOne Billing Simulator can help uncover which plans truly offer the best value for different customer segments. (Even before those customers sign up.)
This approach opens the door to AI-driven product recommendations that go beyond guesswork. It offers personalized suggestions that balance user needs with operator profitability. Imagine an onboarding flow where the system suggests the actually optimal plan, not just the most popular one.
Solve the “Chicken and Egg” Problem for CRMs and Partner Apps
One of the biggest integration hurdles in telecom is the classic “chicken and egg” dilemma. CRMs and partner apps need access to real billing logic to configure, test, and present accurate offers… but you can’t safely give them access to production data during development or early integration. This creates a frustrating loop, where systems are technically connected but functionally blind. That delays time to market and increases the risk of costly mistakes once the system goes live.
With the PortaOne Billing Simulator, we break that loop. External systems, such as Salesforce’s Agentforce for Communications, Dynamics Copilot, or Zendesk, can now run full billing simulations against live configuration logic. (Without ever touching real customer data.) This means CRMs can pre-test new workflows, quotes, promotions, and bundles in a safe, production-like environment. Our customers can confidently integrate their digital sales channels, ensuring that the offers presented to end-users are valid, profitable, and contract-ready from day one.
Lean Sales Approach for a Lean Product
We’re building the PortaOne Billing Simulator the lean way. It’s just like we’ve always done at PortaOne: we listen first, then code. If you’re curious about what billing simulation could do for your business, or if you’ve been secretly wishing for a safe, powerful way to test billing logic without risking production chaos, now’s your chance to shape the tool you’ve been waiting for.
Your Opinion Matters
Currently, we are still at a crossroads. Should we develop it as a utility that only PortaOne customers can use with their PortaBilling? Do other CSPs (with other BSS systems) see a value in this? If so, would you be willing to (a) export the data from the BSS to us, and (b) experiment with the PortaBilling-based product catalog to test the new pricing configuration?
Drop us a line at sales@portaone.com or reach Andriy on LinkedIn to ask about early access. Since we’re still in “sell before you build” 😉👨🏻🔧mode, early adopters won’t just get early access — you’ll help define our roadmap. Think of it as a rare opportunity to co-create a tool that’s purpose-built for your unique requirements.
