Bell Communications Research Inc. and Unisys Corp. have joined together to help fight what once was simple theft but increasingly is becoming a carrier service nightmare-telephone fraud.
The companies formed a strategic alliance to integrate Bellcore’s new NetMavin suite of Signaling System 7 link monitoring software with Unisys’ new NIRIS network management platform.
The combined solution will allow telephone companies, competitive access providers and wireless communications service providers to use near-real-time SS7 data to manage and monitor network events and to identify fraud as it happens, the companies said.
Digital SS7 networks overlay the voice network and are used to manage call set-up and tear-down as well as supervise other network activities. “SS7 has a high degree of deployment with probably 100 percent coverage of wireless networks in North America, maybe two-thirds coverage in Europe and sporadic coverage in Asia. It’s opening up globally at a brisk rate,” according to Mike Myers, Bellcore’s NetMavin Link Monitoring Product Manager.
Unisys and Bellcore want to help carriers leverage off that infrastructure investment with some new tools.
Using sophisticated algorithms, carriers can monitor traffic patterns and fine tune warning thresholds for detecting fraud and focus on high-fraud destinations.
“Telephone fraud is a $5 billion problem in North America and a $15 billion problem worldwide,” Unisys noted. Fraud is estimated to cost the cellular industry about $1.5 million per day in lost airtime.
Besides the revenue ripoff, fraud is a particularly damaging form of crime for existing and start-up wireless service providers because of the drag it places on network performance just as competition between carriers is heating up.
“At certain points in time during the week fraud may be more than 50 percent of a carrier’s airtime,” Myers said. “When it gets that high, fraud becomes a service problem. Network resources are being robbed by people who aren’t paying you any money. Not only is revenue being lost but it creates access problems for legitimate customers,” he said. And network operators are forced to make capital investments to handle the increased traffic-both legitimate and fraudulent.
In addition to fraud reduction, Bellcore said NetMavin has applications for early warning of network events and for ongoing analysis of the network to help prevent outages.
