Revenue share fraud is one of the most significant threats to communications service provider (CSP) revenues but there are methods to fight back and eliminate threats as one CSP has discovered with its deployment of iconectiv TruNumber Protect.
One of the largest mobile operators in Europe, which services more than 31 million customers, was facing massive losses generated by fraudulent calls to expensive premium rate and satellite numbers. The amount of organised fraud forced the CSP to severely restrict its service to roamers and it encountered significant fraud from visitors roaming onto the network.
The service provider runs one of the biggest and fastest mobile networks, with its 4G coverage reaching more than 95% of the country’s population. One of the country’s largest and most advanced digital communications companies, it delivers mobile and fixed communications services and provides extensive fibre and ADSL broadband services.
The situation was compounded because business growth requires more staff to be hired and new employees may be unfamiliar with telecoms terminology and concepts. This can lead to miscommunication, operational inefficiencies and unnecessary expenses. For example, when sales and engineering teams do not use the same nomenclature, inaccurate billing and change orders often result, undermining profitability. In the context of fraud these disconnects and miscommunications can be highly costly.
The fight against organised roaming fraud
In 2005, the company suffered substantial losses from organised fraud, where roamers visiting the country made fraudulent calls to expensive premium rate numbers. A few months later, it was again hit again by huge losses; this time from fraudulent calls to satellite numbers generated by subscribers roaming on one network in Italy.
The fraud incidents took place predominantly during weekends and the use of reactive, rather than proactive, fraud measures introduced a level of latency that the fraudsters could exploit. Looking for a way to stem the losses, the service provider took the drastic decision to block all roaming service on that particular network in Italy.
Turning off all roaming stopped the fraud for the time being. After that, the service provider started routing all roaming calls back to its home country, so that it could block any call that was not terminating in its home country or in Italy. While this scheme was able to stop most of the fraud losses, it had a customer experience impact. The company sought network improvements to prevent future fraud losses and ensure customer satisfaction.
The TruNumber Protect number range database
The CSP turned to iconectiv and its trusted global database of number ranges. The TruNumber Protect offer includes all high-risk numbers in the world, such as premium rate and special service number ranges, as well as all unallocated numbers, which are often abused by fraudsters.
Thanks to this data, fraudulent calls can be proactively blocked and eliminated by checking each dialled number at call setup against the iconectiv database using customised applications for mobile network enhanced logic (CAMEL).
How to combat fraud efficiently
Deploying TruNumber Protect allowed the service provider to:
- Significantly reduce revenue share and roaming fraud with minimal customer complaints
- Achieve a payback time of three months on initial investment
- Save millions since initial deployment in 2007
- Enhance its existing fraud management system with proactive fraud prevention based on comprehensive and continuously updated global number range information
“As a customer of iconectiv’s TruNumber Protect for almost a decade, we have been able to significantly reduce revenue share and roaming fraud losses by blocking fraudulent calls to high-risk revenue share and premium rate numbers,” says the company’s fraud strategy manager. “iconectiv’s global number range database allows us to be proactive in fighting revenue share fraud.”
iconectiv draws on its experience to provide trusted global numbering database and managed services that prevent revenue share fraud, SIM-box fraud and interconnection-related revenue leakage. The company frequently contributes to industry organisation that are committed to fighting telecoms fraud including the GSMA Fraud and Security Group and the CFCA. By battling in this way, revenue share fraud can be eliminated.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @VanillaPlus OR @jcvplus
