TELECOM INSIGHT
National Regulatory Authorities are faced with many challenges in establishing a national telecoms environment. Paramount is the need to protect revenue for legitimate local telecommunication operators and for government. SGS Layer4 is a complete telecoms regulatory solution, offering a unique approach to the governance of telecoms services and the long term development of a solid regulatory framework. As the world s most experienced provider of regulatory services to international governments, SGS is uniquely positioned to ensure your telecoms services operate profitably and with the quality of service expected by your international and national callers. network performance : without REGULATORY ENFORCEMENT telecoms leak fraud & billing errors? If you can t see it, you can t manage it. Many countries across the world are occupied with the pressing issues of economic and social reform. Others simply lack the skills or infrastructure to monitor calls passing through their local telecom operators. Either way, unregulated telecoms can incur financial loss, present risk to inward investment and, ultimately, obstruct socio-economic initiatives. Layer4 breaks this vicious circle by delivering a fully managed, end-to-end service, deployed and managed by SGS without the burden of capital investment. Complete with all the advanced technical infrastructure required to monitor call behaviour, Layer4 provides the visibility that is so vital in controlling telecoms services. For example, Layer4 will identify: Compliance of telecom operators with service level agreements Erosion of telecom revenue from international calls Fraud and other operational irregularities Quality on international and national calls
Harnessing your fastest growing resource International telecommunications is a complex, technical environment. Layer4 incorporates the expertise and resources required to audit and protect your telecoms revenue. From the outset, a significant number of countries are often faced with a disproportionately high volume of incoming calls, creating extreme competition amongst local operators and reducing taxable revenue for the government. Additional threats might include: Lack of fraud management capacity and technologies at National Regulatory Authorities (NRA) Lack of coordination amongst the different institutions involved in fighting fraud (operators, NRA, legal authorities, police, etc.) Often global players operate outside of the country s fiscal jurisdictions Lack of identification of SIM card subscribers By addressing these issues, Layer4 protects your current income, capitalises on your national telecoms estate and secures your share of the exponential growth in global telecoms revenue. service quality? revenue & reputation
Prevention is better than cure, and certainly less costly. This is the approach taken by Layer4 in performing deep analysis of voice traffic, measuring real-time performance threshold levels and identifying trends that point towards irregularities. With end-to-end visibility over your telecoms operators, Layer4 manages quality, protects revenue and reduces fraud. No other service achieves the breadth of vision and depth of insight into telecoms operations. The innovativeness of our technology is matched only by the skill and expertise of our people who, through our Regulatory Consultancy Services, can impart many years experience in dealing with issues such as Interconnection Policy and International Tariffs. Ultimately, Layer4 creates a fair and competitive telecoms landscape that meets local demands for quality of service and tells global organisations that you are open for business.
Subject to a thorough audit of your national telecoms services, our experts will diagnose and design a programme of activity based on a Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) model, resulting in a regulatory system that fits your specific demands now and in the future. how does it work? Typically, this starts with installation of an operations centre and the technical infrastructure required to measure voice traffic across all interconnect points. Using advanced network management processes, Layer4 performs forensics and detection tasks that can identify problems before they happen. This might include generating thousand of automated calls to test for fraud, or testing performance of local operators against their contractual quality of service agreements. Ultimately, all operations are supported with training, capacity building, a realtime network interface and statistical reports that build valuable intelligence for future planning and policy-making.
revenue & reputation Since 2009 our proposed technology has been successfully deployed in several countries. In all cases, this technology has made a positive impact on revenue and elimination of fraud. In particular, the establishment of a minimum tariff on incoming calls has resulted in a major increase in profit margin for local operators and a contribution to government funds. At the same time, Layer4 s anti fraud services have resulted in criminal investigations in a number of instances. WHY SGS? SGS is the world s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 70,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 1,350 offices and laboratories around the world. TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HOW SGS CAN HELP YOU, PLEASE CONTACT US TODAY: LAYER4@SGS.COM With demand for Layer4 type of services growing annually, SGS is now established as an international provider of choice for telecoms regulation.
IN Action HOW TELECOM INSIGHT HELPS SCHOOLING FOR ALL HAITIAN CHILDREN In 2011 the Government of Haiti and all Telecom operators set the termination cost of all incoming international calls at US$ 0.23, from which US$ 0.05 would be used to finance a new National Education Fund. The objective of the fund is to finance school fees for 1.5 million Haitian children. The success of this programme is predicated on the ability of the Government to measure the flow of incoming calls into the country and to prevent calls from being routed via illegal networks. To guarantee success, SGS was mandated to provide equipment and specialist know how to measure all call traffic through licensed operators and to install and manage a system to identify illegal interconnection routes, called the Fraud Management System (FMS). FMS generates several thousand automated calls on a daily basis from more than 20 countries in order to track the routes taken. The information generated by these calls is cross-checked against the data extracted from legitimate routes. The result of this tracking and reconciliation process means all numbers that are used to transfer calls in a fraudulent way are identified and actions can then be taken by the Government to disconnect them. Since the deployment of the SGS operation, the results are overwhelmingly positive for both Haiti and the National Education Fund: US$15 million have been collected for the Fund, in only 6 months Legitimate operators have enjoyed a real increase in their revenue More than 7,000 fraudulent numbers were detected and disconnected, and Criminal arrests occurred for illegal operators, performing by-pass calls via illegal routes With their telecom governance technologies, SGS has empowered our agency in many ways. We are able to independently audit the industry and measure traffic flows. Above all, we now have the tools we need to assist the operators in their ongoing fight against fraud. Jean Marie Guillaume, Eco. General Director, Organe Exécutif du Conseil National des Télécommunications, Haïti
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