Roaming Profile Management (FT-1004.004)

About this document

Scope

This document provides background information as well as a functional description of the FT-1004.004 Roaming Profile Management advanced feature. The described feature is supported from the release version 4.0 onwards.

Note

Roaming Profile Management is an advanced feature and requires a special license. Ensure that you have agreed with Mavoco about the usage of this feature before taking it into use.

This feature is part of the Roaming Profile Management functionality with number FN-1022.

Feature Availability

Feature overview

Goals

The aim of the Roaming Profile Management feature is to provide the creation and management functionality of HLR Roam Area Profiles as an advanced feature.

Out of scope

Migration from not managing HLR Roam Area Profiles to managing HLR Roam Area Profiles.

Functionality of the feature

Roaming Profile Management Concept

The concept of Roaming Profiles encompasses the permissions a SIM has to operate on Networks other than its Home Subscriber Network.  A SIM cannot connect to a Mobile Network that is not authorized by its Roaming Profile. Controlling the allowed roaming networks allows the subscriber costs to be controlled as well.

The CMP provides the ability to apply various Roaming Profiles that grant Network Permissions across the world. When properly configured, Roaming Profiles can also be used as a means to intentionally limit a SIM's geographic range as well as 'steer' a SIM towards one Network over another. This is an important concept when creating Zone Models to be used in Zone Price Plans.

New Roaming Profiles can be created from scratch (i.e., empty Whitelist or Blacklist) or from an existing Roaming Profile (i.e., cloning). CSP creates or modifies Roaming Profiles by using existing Roaming Profiles, Zones, Countries, Network Groups, and/or Networks to build the Whitelist or Blacklist.

Cloning a Roaming Profile enables Users to create a new Roaming Profile based on the parameters of an existing Roaming Profile. The White- and Blacklists are copied from the Parent Roaming Profile to the cloned Roaming Profile.

The Service Provider creates the Roaming Profiles and assigns them to Accounts. Customer Account Users with the appropriate Access Rights may then manage the application of Roaming Profiles to all of their SIMs in the Enterprise Portal.

All Accounts in the CMP will have one or more Roaming Profiles assigned with one Roaming Profile set as default. All new SIM Cards assigned to the Account will automatically pick up this default setting.

Removal of a Roaming Profile from an Account does not delete the Roaming Profile from CMP, nor the HLR.

Whitelists and Blacklists

Roaming Profiles operate with a Whitelist/Blacklist concept. This is determined at the creation of a Roaming Profile.

White- and Blacklists are not independent of each other. It should be noted that there are vendor specific restrictions that apply on an HLR, and therefore restrict the operation of CMP.

Versions of Roaming Profiles

Versions represent variations of a Roaming Profile that have different configurations and are represented by a Version Number. To provide flexibility, CMP allows a Roaming Profile to possess many different Versions, yet only one may be set as active.

Roaming Profile Management Enabled

When the Roaming Profile Management feature is enabled, CMP will have full Roaming Profile Management functionality as described above.

Roaming Profile Management Disabled

When the Roaming Profile Management feature is disabled, CMP will

• in the Resource Manager

  • allow the creation of simple Roaming Profiles, that require the following information:

    • Name,

    • Network Interface,

    • Description,

  • allow defining HLR Profile Reference and HSS Profile Reference for the simple Roaming Profiles,

  • allow manual change of Roaming Profile status to ACTIVE/INACTIVE,

  • disable calling the API for HLR provisioning of Roaming Profiles, and

• in the Enterprise Portal

  • disable the Roaming tab and all Roaming Profile creation and clone functionality.