How Do You Communicate With Service Providers?

You communicate with service providers (and they communicate with you) using the following mechanisms:

• You can use traditional interface techniques. For example, if you send consumption to service providers every month (so they can compute their charges), you could use the Consumption Download interface.
• You can use "notifications" to communicate with service providers. Notifications are electronic transactions that service providers exchange to communicate information about a customer. For example, you could use a notification to send a message to an energy supplier when a customer stops service. Note: the term "Direct Access Service Request" (DASR) is synonymous with Notification.

The difference between notifications and traditional interfaces is subtle. Think of notifications as a generic interface that can be used to communicate many different things (e.g., you can use notifications to advise stops, meter exchanges, supplier switches). Traditional interfaces communicate only one thing (and you need one traditional interface for each "thing"). For example, one interface is devoted to downloading consumption, another is responsible for uploading pass through charges, etc.