Sometimes the cheapest becomes the most expensive

Do you really control your Roaming QoS?

In the last few years, operators have invested in opening as many Roaming Agreements as possible, in order to offer more and innovative services and obtain stronger revenues. At the moment, thanks to Roaming service, almost everyone can use their GSM mobile phone in different countries, as they would at home. Roaming without doubt is the service that provides total mobility in this global world.

But sometimes the reality is a little bit different. Have you tried to make a roaming call but the connection could not be established? Have you made an international call that ended with a foreign announcement? Have you already had problems accessing your voice mail? Or even perhaps there are times when you would have liked to answer the phone but you couldn't see the calling number? To take full advantage of all the benefits of global mobility, it is necessary to use the Roaming service which provides at least the same Quality of Service you use for your mobile phone in your home country.

Operators know this and in order to check if the roaming service provided from both sides is working properly, traffic forecasts (Roaming tests) are performed by both parties involved in the Roaming Agreement. However, , in spite of Operators' efforts in testing Roaming services and subsequently offering the minimum QoS, customers are quite frequently facing a number of Quality of Service problems. Over the last few years, a lot of worrying reports from customers have been registered related to this matter. And of course customer dissatisfaction leads to loss of revenues.

Customers complaining about poor quality of service are in fact a reality!!

The following are just some of the usual problems we hear about:

. Roamers successful calls completion rates vary greatly. Sometimes all calls initiated can be blocked or terminated with an announcement from a foreign network.

. Customers or Roamers are unable to dial International numbers for a similar reasons or the call success ratio is low.

. Difficulty in accessing personal Voice Mail

. The quality of voice is very poor (long delays, audibility only in one direction, etc.)

. CLI presentation is occasional. CLI may have the wrong address and/or format and depends on how the calls are being terminated into the network as a result of the routing method previously described. .

. Fax and Data transmission sessions are being interrupted due to poor service quality, Or they may even be completely blocked.

Such problems concern speech quality, data and fax services, and are caused mainly by minimal cost call routing methods used by various Operators and International transit service providers These routing mechanisms are often unstable where the Quality of Services has not been thoroughly tested for making long distance calls. Sometimes new and unreliable transportation techniques are involved.

It is necessary for Operators not to forget these situations. Customers need good service and Operators need to make their customers happy.

Problems can be avoided when:

. Operators make constantly dedicated tests concerning international traffic (not only the GSM mandatory tests);

. Operators' route calls are only made through reliable International Carriers who are able to guarantee high service quality;

. Operators can implement more specific SLA, (with precise QoS parameters values), with international carriers in order to ensure End-to-End Service Quality while roaming.

Operators are able to control these situations and can really do something about them. Results will be better as a result and of course, this efficiency will directly be translated into greater profitability and customer satisfaction.

Ines Ferreira
Account Manager