Protecting Voice Traffic Revenue
Voice service revenues are on the decline for many Mobile Operators. Fraudulent activities are taking away revenue from the already shrinking pie. One major fraud that is being conducted against Mobile Operators is illegal bypass of International voice traffic into the home network via SIM Boxes. The International voice traffic can be from home Mobile Operator’s roaming subscribers or International originating traffic. SIM Boxes, containing home Mobile Network SIM cards, make these calls seem like local mobile calls.
Comparison of normal International traffic path versus SM Box bypass
Due to this, the home Mobile Operators are losing out in major revenues, charging and earning only local mobile-to-mobile charges when they should have earned International termination revenues from the originating network. Apart from this direct impact, this situation also creates other negative impact on the Mobile Operator such as
Network Capacity Issues
High traffic will be experience in areas where the SIM Box is located, affecting usage and capacity. This will result in a need for Mobile Operator to increase its capacity, causing additional unneeded expenditure and planning.
Service Impact For Subscribers
There are services which are CLI (Caller Line Identification) based. SIM Box bypass manipulates the caller’s CLI and this affects Roaming Subscribers from accessing services such as Voice Mail box. No CLI situation also affects Call Recipients such as returning missed calls to SIM Box numbers instead of real caller and inability to screen calls effectively.
Bad Service Quality Reputation
High concentration of SIM cards at SIM Box location will cause genuine users around the area unable to make and receive calls. In the event that the prepaid SIMs on SIM Box ran out of credits, callers will hear “out of credit” announcement which will confuse them. These are some examples of SIM Box generated scenarios that will create a negative perception of Mobile Operator by subscribers.
Non-compliant To GSM License Obligations
Most operators have licence obligations to co-operate with the authorities. Since the real CLI of the originating party has been manipulated, the home Mobile Operator cannot comply with its obligations if mobile traffic monitoring is requested by the authorities.
Mobile Operators needs to take charge of the situation and not continue losing revenue (and increasing expenditure) due to this situation. Mocean SIM Box Detector provides Mobile Operators a ready solution to immediately overcome such a predicament.