14 DAY TRIAL // Fair Isaac Corporation, one of the leading providers of analytics and decision management technology, and Optel Informatik, a German systems supplier for the telecommunications market, recently announced the mobile industry's first Near Real-Time Roaming Data Exchange (NRTRDE ) gateway to help wireless operators worldwide prevent roaming fraud.
The specified gateway connects Fair Isaac's RoamEx Roamer Data Exchanger network to Optel's MEGS-R network, enabling an automatic, two-way exchange of roaming traffic in near real time. The resulting combined coverage forms the world's largest NRTRDE network, with more than 90 mobile operator networks involved.
Roaming fraud accounts for a high proportion of all fraud in telecommunications. It occurs when a mobile phone subscriber who does not intend to pay for service roams from the service provider's network to another operator network and takes advantage of the home operator's delayed access to the subscriber's call detail records while roaming. An individual roaming fraud incident can result in a loss of more than EUR 1 million within a matter of a few days.
As the trade association for the world's leading global mobile standard with more than two billion subscribers, the GSM Association has recognized this problem and has decided to pursue NRTRDE adoption by all GSM operators by October 2008.
By linking their RoamEx and MEGS-R systems, Fair Isaac and Optel can offer unsurpassed roaming call visibility to operators who subscribe to either network. Operators connected to either RoamEx or the MEGS-R system automatically receive call records for their roaming subscribers from anywhere in the combined network, greatly reducing their roaming fraud exposure.