One of the major factor in the GSM status as the world’s leading mobile technology has been its ability to deliver seamless, cross-border roaming service to allow GSM users to be accessible wherever they are.

However, to date, worldwide roaming requires bi-lateral roaming agreements with an increasing number of 3GSM operators (800+ GSM operators). As the operators increase their roaming agreements, the time and cost required for the full scope of the IREG and TADIG testing increases drastically. While it is often worthwhile for established operators to have bilateral GSM agreements with other major operators, setting-up dedicated agreements with smaller MNOs or going through the time consuming negotiation and testing phases when launching new services like GPRS or CAMEL roaming, is usually financially questionable. At the same time, newer operators, not only find difficulties to set-up agreements with major MNOs but are also limited to settle agreements with other small operators as these agreements often fail to offer a clear return on investment.

The Roaming Hub model, part of the Open Connectivity initiative, is the GSMA response to withdraw the complexity and expense constraints of the current bi-lateral roaming model. Through the Roaming Hub model, operators only need to set-up and maintain a single contact and connection point to automatically reach all the networks connected to a Hub, and through peering between hubs, reach operators connected to other hubs.

AerVox RoamX™-GSM is a GSM Association (GSMA) compliant Roaming HUB solution -IR.80- providing global and instant GSM roaming access through a single point, therefore significantly reducing the time and costs consuming testing and maintenance phases required for any commercial international roaming agreement.

Key Benefits

Increases ROI through quick market entry for international roaming without initial heavy investments.

Reduces CAPEX through decreasing the technical resources to set-up/maintain bi-lateral connections.

Reduces OPEX:

Reducing commercial resources to set-up & maintain existing bi-lateral agreements.
O&M functions being outsourced.

Improves subscribers experience by instantly increasing GSM services coverage around the world.

Attracts & retains corporate users and international travelers by whom roaming is greatly valued.

Fully complies with open standards thereby ensuring that equipment from different manufacturers will work together.

Provides additional security through fraud controls.

RoamX-GSM enables global operators with presence in many countries, roaming brokers, signaling carriers, etc. to become a Roaming Hub Service Provider and thus to offer roaming capabilities to third party operators. With a one-time agreement with a Roaming Hub service provider, other carriers can offer instant international roaming possibilities to their subscribers, without the need to go through multiple costly bi-lateral agreements’ negotiations and network integrations and tests.

The RoamX-GSM solution allows operators to focus on their core competencies without compromising international roaming, the driver of mobility, all through one standard roaming agreement with the Roaming Hub service provider.

Main Features

GSM Association (GSMA) - Open Connectivity – IR.80 compliant Roaming HUB solution.

GSM and CAMEL roaming support.

GPRS roaming support if used together with RoamX-GPRS.

Multiple routing choices can be simultaneously provided – Alias GT, MTP Direct Routing, Translation Type and SCTP/SUA.

Multiple inter-hub connectivity choices can be simultaneously provided - MTP Direct Routing and SUA/SCTP.

Per operator connectivity and routing choice configuration.

Per operator roaming agreements’ control through blacklists and whitelists.

Roaming and charging transparency assurance:

Full visibility of the outbound roamers destination (country and network)
Full visibility of the inbound roamers home network.

QoS, usage and performance reports.

Optional Roaming Fraud control features and reports.

Optional non-GSM operators SS7 interoperability support.

		Roaming and Messaging solutions deployment 2 Mar 07.- DATATRONICS, through its integration division, has deployed at TME the Xphere3G platform as well as the Roaming Broker, Inter-Carrier SMS Control, and Dual IMSI to Roam solutions from AerVox S.L.