Incoming SMS billing to Roaming partners

• Roaming is the ability of customers to use their mobile phones or other mobile devices outside the geographical coverage area provided by their normal network operator

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• When customers travel abroad and use their phones or laptops whilst on a foreign (“visited”) network, this is known as international roaming.

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• Sending and receiving SMS text messages whilst roaming abroad is called SMS roaming

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• A friend sends an SMS to your mobile phone while you are roaming

• His operator’s network contacts your home network to find out where you are, and then routes the SMS to the network you are roaming on in the visited country

• The visited network delivers your friend’s SMS to your mobile phone.

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• A friend sends an SMS to your mobile phone while you are roaming

• His operator’s network contacts your home network to find out where you are, and then routes the SMS to the network you are roaming on in the visited country

• The visited network delivers your friend’s SMS to your mobile phone.

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• Most operators do not charge for receiving an SMS while roaming.

• The sender of the SMS also only pays the usual price as if the receiving customer were on their home network.

• Hence mobile operators bear the additional costs of handling the received roaming SMS without charging customers for it.

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• Some roaming partners send bulk SMS MT through the International Roaming signaling network

• These operators have, as a second business, selling BULK SMS to other business

– social network sites

– banks

– social security administrations

– advertising

– others

• As the SMS are not going through any kind of billing system, the events are not billed to the sender

• This can be considered betrayal of trust

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Web site Mobile Operator

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• Install a SMS Firewall in the middle of the International Roaming signaling link, (by blocking SMS we are blocking revenue also)

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Your

networkIntnl. Roaming

signaling

Network

SMS firewall

Partner

Partner

Partner

• Deliver partner originated SMS through SMS transit gateways (currently not suitable)

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• Our SMS firewall is very limited in features

• We need to identify roaming partners using sender’s SMS Center GT

• Our mediation device does not output sender’s SMS Center GT

• SMS Center GT is available in raw MSC’s CDRs

• decodes raw CDRs and reports the count of SMS coming from roaming partners

• The report is used to bill roaming partners that exceed received SMS threshold

• If necessary a different threshold may be used for each partner

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Questions and Answers