SS7 Analysis: Critical Information for your Roaming Business
Most operators today carry out in depth analyses of the TAP records that they receive. These give a view of the business that the operator has won and how it is varying over time. This is clearly very useful. However it does not give you a full picture of what is going on.
To see why, let’s consider an analogy.
Running a Shop
Let’s suppose you are running a shop in the high street. You have competition from a number of other shops. Some of them sell products that are very similar to those that you sell.
In this analogy, TAP records are essentially till receipts. These till receipts can tell you a lot about what you have sold. You can see which products were the most popular. You can see where you customers are coming from.
However there is still a lot that you do not know. You don’t know which potential customers never came into your shop because they were recommended to visit one of your competitors. You don’t know who would have bought from you but couldn’t (perhaps because you do not accept their type of credit card). You don’t know how many came in, but left without buying anything. And you don’t know how many people took goods from your shelves without paying for them.
Running a Roaming Network
SS7 analysis is designed to help you with all the stuff that you don’t know about the network today. It also gives you a real time view of what is happening. It answers questions such as:
- What steering targets do roaming partners give my network?
- Where do my subscribers go? Where do they never make calls or send SMS? Are there partner networks that they have trouble connecting to?
- Where do visitors come from? Which ones never make calls or send SMS?
- How many subscribers do not connect to my network because I don’t have a CAMEL agreement in place?
- Where do I have SS7 configuration issues / interconnect issues? How many visitors cannot attach to my network because of this? Do we need to increase roaming capacity, add more interconnects?
- How much traffic is flowing through our network now? Why has traffic dropped today? What has changed?
- How many SMS fraud attempts are going on?
- How do I check my MSU interconnect bill?
- What partners are blocking our SMS traffic?
A typical SS7 analysis report: this shows roaming partners steering against the network and the extent of roamers being lost to various connection issues.
Payback
The payback on carrying out SS7 analysis is usually very significant and virtually immediate. When a system is first implemented, for example, we are usually able to show how an operator can capture 5% to 15% more roamers by fixing connection issues between them. In some cases we have been able to show up to a 40% increase. The exact number depends on the situation in each operator and his roaming partners.
An analysis of your roaming steering platform’s operation can also lead to some direct gains. We can show where revenue is being lost due to steering induced attachment problems. We can also show if you are the victim of anti-steering.
However the largest payback of all is likely to come from the greater insight that you get into your roaming business. It helps you to prioritise much more effectively, targeting the issues that will really make a difference. You will also be able to manage partner relations much more effectively, ensuring that you get the best deals .
As one roaming manager said to me: “Without SS7 analytics we were just flying blind without radar!”
Setting Up SS7 Analytics
Many operators already have SS7 probes in place. These are typically being used to carry out engineering monitoring and troubleshooting tasks. However they can also be used to collect information for this type of analysis. The engineering team simply needs to be advised of which data to collect.
If no SS7 probes are currently in place, then a loss less passive probe can be readily implemented. This is quite simple if the installation is jsut for a short term study. Typically this is accomplished in a couple of hours. For longer term implementation a more robust dual server redundant probe can be implemented. Typically this takes a little longer. Evolved Intelligence "NIFs" can also be used.
The analysis package first filters and organises the data that it is collecting. This makes it easier for the analytics package to extract the information it needs for the various reports. In effect it acts as a search engine for the huge quantities of data available from the SS7 stream.
This very quantity of data means that the system needs to take intelligent decisions about which data to keep for the long term in order to allow longitudinal analyses.
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