Movius Corporation has launched a new solution that it says will help operators to reduce roaming costs by automatically provisioning a new local number when a roamer arrives in a network.
However, it is also bamboozling some operators, the US-based vendor claimed.
John Green, Vice President of Movius, told Mobile Europe that myIdentities is the first solution in the world able to operate using both the visiting network’s circuit-switched TDM and IP data network.
“It is a multi-line multi-messaging capability that does not need any SIM or hardware modification. All you have to do is to have the application (provided by your operator) on your phone and it will give you multiple lines on your device,” he explained.
Common practice currently is to welcome a roamer to a new network with a text. With myIdentities, this would be exchanged for a free app download that would have everything the user needs.
“Our roaming solution will allow the operator to give the roaming subscriber a local number. So, if you are on holiday in another country, your operator will provide your family and friends with a local number and they will be charged locally,” said Green.
Tim Shepherd, Senior Analyst at Canalys, said that Movius’ solution is innovative and crucially does not burden consumers with much in the way of setup complexity. It also eliminates the need for replacement SIMs.
But Green claimed that operators are “bamboozled” by the solution. In particular, he said it is hard for operators to understand it from an integration and billing perspective.
“Its hard for them to believe that they can actually use their existing OSS/BSS service without the need for multiple SIMs,” he said.
“Because the primary number is registered to the home network, the operator automatically knows where the roamer is because it is statistically mapped. [They] can straight away correlate the primary number with the virtual number because in principle they are the same.”
Shepherd believes the solution has the potential to significantly reduce roaming costs. “Such a service would reduce customer frustration and help to ensure operators move in line with increasing regulatory restrictions in markets such as the European Union,” he said.
In September, the European Commission announced that operators in Europe would be banned from charging for incoming calls from July 2014.
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