Just like many other industries and businesses, “Testing” in today’s dynamic telecom industry is extremely important to assure the quality of the international roaming services provided to customers. Obviously, each operator wants to reduce costs and increase margins, yet without compromising quality. To achieve this balance, Mobile operators need to start with the basic activity of performing IREG and TADIG testing. In fact, these tests usually come before signing the international roaming agreement between the 2 operators. If you are wondering what an “international roaming agreement”, please read our previous article about it here. Indeed, the international roaming agreement is established after a series of testing processes called IREG and TADIG testing. & validating the TAP files through testing. But what does that even mean?

The name IREG comes from the “International Roaming Expert Group” of the GSMA (GSM Association) who designed the tests. The objective from this test is to reassure that calls, SMS, and other services work well during roaming, which includes testing call functionality and user experience, signaling, call handling, etc.

The name TADIG also comes from a GSMA Group: “Transferred Account Data Interchange Group” who designed the standards for it.

The objective here is different: it’s to reassure that the roaming partner will bill the calls correctly, which includes testing the billing system, its performance, any changes in the software/hardware, etc.

So, to keep a long story short, while the IREG testing is to test the proper functioning of the established communication links, the TADIG testing is to check the billability of the calls.

As you can see, both IREG and TADIG testing play a major role in establishing a roaming agreement and ensuring the quality and profitability of call/services for both operators. And that’s exactly where we come in. We, at RoamSmart, provide advanced solution for both these testing processes.

Our IREG360° is an automated web application which helps managing the full process around IR.21/IR.85 handling (RAEX and Non-RAEX) and building a centralized and comprehensive database with the updated data of all roaming partners, in addition to automated change detection and notification. It simply offers you piece of mind with a reliable solution at minimum cost. To learn more about it, please visit our page here.

In addition, our TADIG module is an innovative application which automates the process of TADIG validation through comprehensive check of TAP file content (the usage by a subscriber in a visited network is captured in a file called the TAP: “Transferred Account Procedure”) based on the received test sheet and the latest IOT document of the roaming partner. To learn more about our TADIG module, you can visit our page here.

RoamSmart is a leading provider of innovative Roaming and Big Data Solutions to mobile operators. To learn more about us, please click here, or just drop us a message here.

International mobile roaming is a service that allows mobile users to continue to use their mobile phone or other mobile device to make and receive voice calls and text messages, browse the internet, and send and receive emails, while visiting another country. We have all been there, whether traveling for tourism or for business, where we need to keep our communication going and not just rely on the hotel’s internet or its international calls service. That’s where international roaming comes in handy, but you should know that there is a lot going on behind the scenes to ensure the service is available to you and with a reasonable cost.

First, let’s try to quickly understand the players involved in delivering the roaming service via this simple diagram:

Apart from yourself initiating the call abroad and the phone user you are calling at home, we have the 2 telecommunication companies or network operators in the two countries, in addition to the international transit service providers. In order to be able to connect to a visited network and make your phone call, a roaming agreement needs to be in place between the visited network and the home network.

To ensure a successful roaming operation, these various stakeholders have to collaborate closely on various technical aspects. And to make this collaboration work smoothly, they need to have clear and detailed “International Roaming Agreements” that specify the roles and responsibilities of each party. These agreements are essential when drafting Direct Wholesale Roaming contracts for instance. In other words, it is a binding document between the roaming partners that specify the legal roaming business aspects negotiated between them, such as billing of the services obtained or the monitoring to be performed, etc. The GSM Association broadly outlines the content of such roaming agreements in standardized form for its members. The agreements may be composed of various parts, for example:

AA.12: it is the International Roaming Agreement. It is a standard GSM Association PRD (permanent reference document) with standard clauses.

AA.13: it contains the Common Annexes with operational information (e.g. information on tap file, billing data, settlement procedure, customer care, fraud, etc.)

AA.14: Individual Annexes: it contains the information about the operator (e.g. contact details of roaming team, fraud team, IREG team, TADIG team, etc.)

You may have noticed the terms IREG and TADIG and you probably are wondering what those terms mean. We actually explain those terms in another article, you can read it here.

Now, we don’t want to get too technical here or dive into too much details, but you surely got a sense of how complicated the international roaming agreements can be and the challenges behind ensuring what seems to be a simple phone call: and that’s where we come in.

We, at RoamSmart, are here to make this whole process easier for all the stakeholders involved. We support Telcos (Telecommunications companies) in the digital transformation of their roaming and wholesale business and we provide them with high value services addressing their specific roaming needs. Our solutions help optimize workflows and monetize the existing roaming data from several sources. To keep a long story short, we help create win-win partnerships for all the parties involved and, above all, ensure the satisfaction of the end customer.

To learn more about our services and how we can help your business and improve your bottom line, please click here, or just get in touch with us here and we will get back to you asap.

RoamSmart has been offering RAEX Management tools, managed by highly dedicated IREG teams specialized in handling RAEX and non-RAEX IR.21/IR.85 documents on daily basis.

This sensitive information has to be updated and organized in a way that is extractable from different formats (xml, pdf, word).
Using an automated RAEX IR.21 Management system has several advantages like securing roaming revenues, saving costs and strengthening the core network enough to avoid fraud risk. Besides, it upgrades the roaming experience for the roaming customers.
RoamSmart’s IREG360° is an automated web application which helps managing and building a centralized and comprehensive database around IR.21/IR.85 with the updated data of all roaming partners, in addition to the automatic creation of configuration files. It features:
• Dashboard for easy follow-up on coverage status and document availability.
• Automatic upload of IR.21/IR.85 updates from GSMA Infocenter Inbox.
• Version Control and Parsing of RAEX compliant IR.21/IR.85.
• Manual conversion of non-RAEX documents (in pdf, word or excel format) to be done by RoamSmart Managed solutions team and full content to be available within 48 hours from document availability. IREG360° makes all your partners RAEX compliant and creates xml IR.21 for those who send other formats.
• Changes detection and classification based on sub-section and target groups.
• Automatic notification to target departments/teams.
• Follow-up and completion workflow.
• Comprehensive reporting for better visibility.

The IREG360° is the optimum solution for any mobile network operator, it enables many operations such as roaming audits and making the whole process effortless. Besides to providing adaptability to customer requirements and integrations.

The process of Roaming audit aims to identify the potential misconfiguration cases and review the roaming configuration in a pro-active approach leading to a network quality improvement and a revenue increase. The roaming audit engine is established to detect the changes, report to the involved departments and compleate successfully the roaming footprint for implementation on network configurations.

In fact, The Roaming audit commercial and technical teams are making sure that the IR.21/IR.85 updates from the roaming partners are getting configured correctly on the network on a daily basis.

The issue with the implementation of the roaming network, is that sometimes it can be so neglected that almost forgotten. Lack of importance from humans or some urgent projects can be the main reason of this omission. It results in missing and erroneous configurations that can lead to unavailable services for potential roaming customers. Therefore the poor quality perception and a major loss of revenues; Basically every mistake in IP network configurations impacts data roaming services both for inbound and outbound roamers.

The Roaming Database Audit features

· Dashboard for easy follow-up on coverage status and latest audits.

· Automatic upload of IR.21/IR.85 updates from GSMA Infocenter Inbox.

· Version Control and Parsing of RAEX compliant IR.21/IR.85.

· Manual conversion of non-RAEX documents (in pdf, word or excel format) to be done by RoamSmart Managed solutions team and full content to be available within 48 hours from document availability. RDBA makes all your partners RAEX compliant and creates xml IR.21 for those who send other formats.

· Build and maintain an updated reference Database.

· Upload of Core Node Database tables.

· Automatic Audit and detection of configuration gaps.

· Comprehensive reporting and alarming for better visibility..

RoamSmart’s Roaming Database Audit (RDBA) is a computerized web application providing an up-to-date audit service that can identify Roaming configuration errors .

The mechanism is built on RoamSmart’s modular Unified Roaming Platform which provides configuration solutions in your mobile network by using intelligent analysis and search tools along with full flexibility and adaptation to customer specific requirements.