We are all aware of the financial crisis  by now .There is no doubt the world financial crisis will cast its spell on every sector, and that  most people would feel it one way  or another.
Although it makes little sense asking what it would mean to one component, it is an interesting question how it will affect the Revenue Assurance (RA) discipline in the Telecommunication sector.

Before starting analyzing the impact we should  first know that there is  a clear distinction between the effect on RA vendors, and on the RA discipline.
The impact on  RA vendors is depending mainly upon  their financial situation and structure before/when the crisis began. While some will gain, others might lose.
It is a different picture when looking at the RA discipline that exists since the year of  2000 .
In spite of the year 2000 Telecom crisis the RA discipline has successfully managed to stay relevant. it has got even more solid afterwards, since SP’s moved from a “gain subscribers at all costs” approach  to “increase revenues and profitability” approach .

SPs’ have realized that RA, especially when there are low hanging fruit, is perhaps the most cost effective way to increase revenues and optimize  profitability. These led many operators to start or enhance their RA activities.

When the 2000 crisis passed people asked, will RA continue to exist?
Surprisingly to some, predictable to others, RA continued to flourish; the saturation of mobile handset penetration, alongside  the ARPU limitations, and the lack of real new killer applications, didn’t allow SPs’ to give up the positional  revenues associated with RA activities,  and convinced SPs to invest even more in RA.

In parallel RA increasingly developed from a sideline activity status in the organization to a discipline (RA as a discipline is still far from the maturity level of accounting, but it is advancing). Now what will be the effects on the RA discipline in the current financial crisis?My forecast is that it will help the RA discipline.
On one hand SPs are already aware of the economical benefits of RA (recall that by 2000 RA importance was not really proved/accepted as a fact by the industry), and especially in a crisis time these benefits are crucial. 
On the other hand SPs are conscious of their expenses, and they will want to embrace industries good practices, and not to reinvent wheels. Therefore I believe that RA will be a much stronger and well applied discipline as a result of this new financial crisis.