CSG Assure Roaming Testing Whitepaper

CSG Assure Roaming Testing Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience You know how important roaming is for your business. But with the rapidly changing environment and new technologies being launched at a fast pace, it can be challenging to maintain the same quality of service as when your customers are in their home network. This can lead to user experience and quality of service issues that can negatively impact your revenue stream.

Our active roaming testing allows you to simulate the real roamer experience, providing end-to-end testing for roaming quality verification. With a global test network of mobile probes supporting 2G-5G network technologies, you can control the services used by your roamers to ensure a good roaming user experience. We offer a variety of tests for voice, SMS, and data, including GRQ and IREG support.

At CSG, we understand the importance of delivering a seamless roaming experience for your customers.

That's why we offer CSG Assure Roaming Testing, a solution designed to help you provide the best possible roaming experience, no matter where your customers are in the world.

Our SaaS solution is deployed in the cloud, making it easy to manage and scale as your business grows. At CSG, we believe that delivering a seamless roaming experience is essential for customer satisfaction and retention. That's why we offer a range of testing capabilities to help you verify the key services your customers expect when roaming, including voice, SMS, data, and network registration.

Not possible to register in any network

Voice quality is poor People cannot see my number

Data speed is poor

The roamer experience often does not meet expectations.

VOICE I cannot roam with my prepaid SIM

I cannot receive calls from back home I cannot send SMS

DATA

VOICE

Roaming is only working sometimes during the week

ROAMER

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Our system evaluates several QoS parameters in the call related to connectivity and quality, ensuring that your customers receive a high level of service quality. We also offer support for GSMA GRQ (Global Roaming Quality) KPIs and GSMA IREG (International Roaming Expert Group) testing, ensuring that you meet the latest industry standards.

Choose CSG for your roaming testing needs and deliver a high-quality roaming experience for your customers. With our solution, you can ensure that your customers remain constantly connected with the same quality of service as when they are in their home network, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention.

Our network registration test verifies that successful registration can be done by the roamer in the visiting network, for the applicable network technology, ensuring a seamless experience from the moment your customers arrive.

Don't let roamer experience and quality of service issues impact your revenue stream - choose CSG Assure Roaming Testing today.

Testing Capabilities CSG Assure Roaming Testing is a SaaS solution that provides end-to-end active testing for roaming quality verification. It allows mobile operators to simulate the real roamer experience and proactively identify and resolve roaming issues before they impact customers.

Simulating a German subscriber traveling to Brazil and roaming on a Brazilian network, calling back home to Germany

CSG's test nodes are “robots” (in 150+ countries covering 600+ mobile networks) that can simulate a roamer using mobile data, making/receiving voice calls, sending/receiving SMS

Roamer in Brazil calling back home to Germany

CSG Roaming Testing

Mobile networks and international voice infrastructure are used to make the call

German roamer in Brazil

CSG’s Roaming Testing ▪ Controls the robots to make and receive the test call ▪ Receives the result of the test call

Ensuring QoS / elevated customer experience.

3G

4G

5G

All of (2G), 3G, 4G, 5G technologies supported

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Assure A Test Node

Voice Testing Measure the effectiveness of voice services across different technologies by examining various call-related quality of service (QoS) metrics, such as connection stability and audio clarity.

Audio

Assure B Test Node

Call

Assure Service

QoS Measurements

IMS/VoLTE Measurements

CSFB Additional Measurements

Connectivity: Ringing, answer success and delay

Successful IMS and VoLTE network registration

Verify CSFB (Circuit Switch Fall Back) in LTE networks where VoLTE is not available

Voice quality (MOS) for the calling and called party, using ITU-T P.863 (POLQA) reference method

Successful VoLTE call completion – That LTE is used in the call

Successful CSFB call completion

Audio delay for the calling and called party through clock synchronized test nodes

Verify expected superior call setup times and voice quality

Verify return to LTE after the call

SMS Testing

Prevents the most common SMS issues including lost messages, long delivery delay and altered content

Verifies a comprehensive set of parameters across the different network technologies 2G-5G

QoS Measurements

SMS over IP

Welcome SMS

True message delivery success and delay

Check successful IMS network registration

Validate reception of welcome SMS when registering in the visiting network

Message content and sender address (OA) validation

Send SMS: Verify if the SMS was sent over IP, delivered successfully, timely

Special Assure feature allowing verification of such incoming “asynchronous” SMS

Delivering SMSC and Delivery report indication

Receive SMS: Verify if the SMS was successfully received over IP, timely

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Data Testing

Perform Data testing in all the network technologies 2G-5G evaluating several QoS parameters for the data session.

QoS Measurements

5G Data

Verify each step in the data session establishment: Location Update, PDP Context, IP Lease, DNS Lookup, Web server access

Verify the expected higher data speed, lower latency and superior service level in 5G

Measure download and upload speed in http/https and ftp/ftps

Verify additional key parameters such as support for dual connectivity in 5G/NR (DCNR)

Special testing such as PING and Roundtrip delay

Show the signal strength for the test - specific importance due to the limited 5G coverage in many locations

Network Registration Testing

Verify that the roamer can successfully register on the visiting network

Validate that registration is successful for the applicable network technology (2G, 3G, 4G, or 5G)

Confirm that registration can be achieved in both manual and automatic selection modes

QoS Measurements

PLMN and RAT Selection Alternatives

Basic LU (Location Update), PS Attach, CS Attach success, delay validation

Manual PLMN - RAT: Attempt to register in the selected combination

Capture signal strength (RX Level) during registration

Manual PLMN - Auto RAT: Attempt to register in the selected PLMN, RAT auto selected

For IMS networks, in addition IMS registration success and delay are checked

Auto PLMN - RAT selection: Register in the auto selected PLMN and RAT

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

GRQ & IREG Testing

GSMA GRQ and GSMA IREG play a critical role in maintaining the quality and reliability of roaming services worldwide. By continuously monitoring roaming service performance and conducting rigorous testing, these initiatives help to ensure that subscribers have a seamless and positive roaming experience across different networks and geographies.

GRQ

IREG

Use the test scenario and scheduling features to have the required tests generated for GRQ KPI reporting

Provides the active test component used for IREG functional testing

View result in interactive dashboards or though distributed reports

Support for IR.24, IR25, IR.32, IR.35, IR.38, IR.50, IR.60

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Steering of Roaming & Benchmarking Testing

Ensure subscribers are roaming in the preferred network and detect anti-steering of roaming activities with Steering of Roaming (SoR) testing. Benchmark performance against competitors, validate SoR behaviour and gain valuable market intelligence.

SoR Verification Features

Benchmarking

Auto PLMN: Register in the PLMN as steered by the preferred PLMN list

Compare roamer experience with local users in the visited network as well as the experience of other roamers in that network

Capture OTA messages sent to the user for steering purposes

Get intelligence of which networks inbound roamers are registering in

Test trace showing details about number and delay of Location Update requests and Reject causes

CSG SIM pool used to generate benchmark tests representing a large set of leading operators

Analyze the information in interactive dashboards

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

eSIM Testing

CSG Assure provide comprehensive testing for eSIMS. Assure supports a wide range of eSIMs and other multi-profile SIMs test cases including verification of successful location-based profile swaps.

eSIM Features

Hardware support

eSIM Array with MFF2 format support to host and manage your eSIMs for testing

Profile management testing

Test important profile management procedures according to GSMA RSP (Remote SIM Provisioning) specifications for OTA SMS

Network services testing

Verify network registration, SMS and Data services

Network Registration: Verify successful network registration for the profile in the selected network

Data Connectivity and Speed: Verify successful data connectivity and proper speed in 2G-3G-4G-5G

SMS Delivery: Verify successful sending and reception of SMS

STK tracing

View the details of the OTA SMS and the STK (SIM Application Toolkit) commands in the Assure trace

Voice Call Report

Data Session Report

IoT

Voice

Data

SMS

Roamer

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

General Features: Test Execution CSG Assure user-friendly test execution, automated test batch scheduling, and detailed test result storage streamlines the testing process, enabling users to efficiently identify and resolve network issues.

Test Execution Features Interactive testing: Execute the tests and get back the result in real-time Automated testing: Schedule a test batch for automated, recurring execution Story testing: Simulated physical access to a roaming mobile phone (test node) in any covered country. Trigger actions and monitor the response in real-time. Use a head-set for a phone conversation using the roaming node.

Test trace: Tracing with extensive technical information for trouble shooting. (link to tracing section)

Dashboards Analyse the results in interactive dashboards, distribute in reports and trigger alerts in case of issues.

Dashboards

Reports

Alerts

Web-based interactive dashboards where the test results can be analyzed from different angles on various aggregation levels

Graphical, tabular, combined reports for automatic scheduling and emailing

Define alerts to be automatically triggered in case of detected issues

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Tracing Tracing functionality providing extensive technical information from the mobile network as well as test system events. A powerful tool for trouble shooting for expert users.

Tracing Features

Layer 3 / RRC (Radio Resource Control) signalling trace for messages between the between User Equipment and Base Station NAS (Non-Access Stratum) signalling trace for messages exchanged between the User Equipment and the Core Network Test system trace - powerful and easy-to-use feature that provides sufficient information in many cases

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CSG Assure Roaming Testing: Delivering a Seamless Roaming Experience

Implementation & Operation CSG Assure is provided as Software as a Service (SaaS). CSG hosts the system in the CSG-AWS cloud and no system installation is normally required on the customer premises.

Choose CSG for your roaming testing needs and deliver a seamless, high-quality roaming experience for your customers. With our solution, you can ensure that your customers remain

constantly connected with the same quality of service as when they are in their home network, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention.

Don't let roamer experience and quality of service issues impact your revenue stream - choose CSG Assure Roaming Testing today.

Key Features:

Benefits:

End-to-end active testing

Improved roaming user experience

Reduced roaming revenue loss

Proactive identification and resolution of roaming issues

Enhanced network quality and performance

for roaming quality verification Global test network of mobile probes supporting 2G/3G/4G/5G network technologies Remote SIM technology to simulate international roamers

Use Cases:

Roaming quality verification

and IREG supported

New roaming agreement testing

Service launch testing

SaaS solution deployed

Network benchmarking

eSIM testing

Variety of tests for voice, SMS, data including GRQ

in the cloud

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About CSG CSG empowers companies to build unforgettable experiences, making it easier for people and businesses to connect with, use and pay for the services they value most. Our customer experience, billing and payments solutions help companies of any size make money and make a difference. With our SaaS solutions, company leaders can take control of their future, and tap into guidance along the way from our more than 5k-strong experienced global team.

Want to learn more about how to be a change maker and industry shaper like our 1,000-plus clients?

Visit csgi.com to learn more.

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