Tata Communications enables prepaid roaming at Beijing Olympics

Details: Michael Schwartz; Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 19 August 2008; 10329 views

Foreign mobile users attending the Beijing Olympics have been enjoying seamless roaming provided by Tata Communications. Tata's eXchange system enables mobile network operators to establish roaming more quickly and cheaply...

Tata Communications is helping to bring prepaid roaming to the 2008 Beijing Olympics with its Intelligent CAMEL eXchange (ICX), a service that significantly reduces the time and cost of implementing international prepaid roaming relationships between mobile network operators.

Four of the world's largest mobile network operators will team up with one of China's largest mobile phone operators to pioneer roaming to the Beijing Olympic Games via Tata's wholesale service. The local carrier is currently offering inbound prepaid roaming for its roaming partners seamlessly. Notably, Tata's ICX was chosen in response to the challenges created by the complexity of its network and the need to deliver support to major roaming partners in time for the Olympic Games.

The service allows the Chinese carrier to offer inbound prepaid roaming for its roaming partners in time for the Olympic Games. Market conditions for roaming in developing markets are highly complex, with challenges such as the use of multiple equipment manufacturers, vast land mass, more than one area, and language barriers. ICX allows operators to expand their CAMEL reach further and faster by offering normalisation, intelligent signaling as well as remote testing. With real-time normalisation of CAMEL messaging on Tata Communications' hosted ICX infrastructure, technical incompatibilities between networks, such as multiple phases of CAMEL, are quickly resolved.

"Operators have a strong appetite these days for extending the reach of their CAMEL connectivity, allowing them both to expand the coverage of their international prepaid roaming service and to reap the advantages of CAMEL-based postpaid roaming. Market response to Intelligent CAMEL eXchange is strong," said Allan Chan, Executive Vice-President, Mobility Services for Tata Communications. "For Intelligent CAMEL eXchange, Beijing is the start of things to come. Close to 20 mobile network operators worldwide are currently testing ICX..."

In addition, ICX also supports Virtual Home Environment (VHE) capabilities, thereby increasing call completion rates and improve customer experience. Remote testing and monitoring, troubleshooting and fault resolution are made easier and faster while dependency on technical support resources at Mobile Network Operators is reduced.

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