1. All You Need To Know About 2014 EU Roaming Regulation
2. •DSP – Domestic Service Provider
The telecom service provider that supplies the mobile services in the home country. It can be either a fully fledged network, or an MVNO
•ARP – Alternative Roaming Provider
ARP – Alternative Roaming Provider, is the entity that provides the alternative roaming service.
•LBO – Local Breakout Provider
LBO provider – ARP that provides only local data services in the visited country
Terminology
3. •Part of the EU digital agenda with specific aim to increase customer protection and move towards a unified European mobile market
•The goals:
EU Roaming Background
A tighter integration across EU Telecom market
An increased competition at retail and wholesale level
A gradual move towards a "roaming free" Europe
4. •Usually the major factor for choosing a mobile operator is considered to be the domestic price, the roaming price being accepted by default as imposed by the domestic service provider
•In parallel with the decoupling, the regulatory framework imposes new roaming price caps for voice, SMS, data at both wholesale and retail level
•By separating roaming services from the home country service the regulation aims to open up the competition on the roaming services within EU that should naturally lead to a reduction of the retail price
What Are The Commercial Implications
7. Implications For DSP
To comply, the Domestic Service Provider must at a minimum level:
•(ARP enablement) Implement the provisioning process required to enable ARP subscriptions
•(ARP enablement) Implement real-time logic that routes the roaming charging events towards the ARP systems
•(ARP enablement) Implement wholesale billing process with the ARP
•(ARP enablement) Notify the partner ARP network of subscriber mobility events within the EU
•(LBO enablement) Remove steering logic across EU to allow their users to use LBO when attached to EU network
•(LBO enablement) Reject any roaming data traffic that uses the EU Internet APN
8. ARP Infrastructure Requirements
The infrastructure that ARPs require is at least comprised of:
•Real-time charging platform
•Prepaid platform for customer subscription and account balance management
•Perhaps postpaid capabilities if business case allows this
•Payments platform for top-ups, voucher management
•Messaging capabilities for regulated SMS notifications and customer care notifications
•Provisioning platform for integration with the domestic service provider
•Wholesale solution for settlement with the domestic service provider
9. LBOs Technical Requirements
The technical needs of LBO providers are simple and straightforward:
•Implement local-break-out functionality in their network. This is a standard 3GPP feature, and does not require complex changes on the legacy infrastructure
•Implement a provisioning platform to send notifications to the DSP
•Modify the wholesale process, so local data traffic is not charged to the domestic service provider
•Implement data charging functionality for the inbound roamers using local data LBO providers can enable secondary tools to improve customer insight:
•Implement location monitoring, to understand subscriber movement, and detect roamers arrival
•Implement reporting across the LBO solution, for better support of the marketing process
12. Where can Computaris help 3/3
For Domestic Service Providers
For ARPs
For LBO Providers
Computaris can offer several individual elements consolidated into a single platform.
Computaris’ lightweight MVNO/E platform can be offered instead of individual components
Lightweight fully fledged Prepaid Charging Platform can be offered instead of individual components
DSP
ARP
LBO
