IWG Doc 06_069

SMS Home Routing - Bilateral case

IWG#6 meeting in Montreal, 7 May 2007 Axel Doerner, Vodafone D2

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2007 GSM Association

Aim of this presentation

Explain what SMS Home Routing is and identify impacts Present the current status of the discussion and next steps

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SMS Interworking normal flow in case of roaming

Home A (APMN)
SMSC
Obtain routing info

Home B HLR

submit forward

User A

Existing Interworking Agreements explicitly exclude this scenario, although in principle Visited B this scenario could be included into the V-MSC interworking agreement (Scenario 5 in V-SGSN AA.19/BA.43)1 Side effect noted: By default SMS delivery deliver will only work if Home A has a signalling agreement with Visited B. Where no User B roaming/interworking agreement is in place between Home A and Visited B it is therefore not guaranteed that the SMS can be 2007 Copyright GSM Association 10/01/2013 delivered! RESTRICTED 1See backup slide on the complexity of
billing for scenario 5

SMS Interworking flow in case of home routing

Home A (APMN)
SMSC
Obtain routing info

Home B HLR
forward

SMS Router
Note: Internal signalling flow in Home B not shown here for sake of simplicity

submit forward

User A

Some networks have implemented Home Routing for SMS-MT (tbc) Instead of returning the actual address of the recipient user Home B returns the address of an SMS Router operated by Home B which in turn forwards the message to the user The SMS Router functionality is standardised by 3GPP in R7 (see TR 23.840, TS 23.0401)

Visited B V-MSC V-SGSN

deliver

User B
2007 Copyright GSM Association 10/01/2013 1This is the SMS stage 2 spec, not included here but available RESTRICTED from ftp.3gpp.org/specs/latest/Rel-7/23_series for download

Impacts of SMS home routing

Potential Benefits May fix some strange effects that some short messages do not reach the recipient although SMS interworking is in place Allows Home B to implement additional services, e.g. persistent SMS storage on a network server, SMS redirection, better Spam Control Aligns SMS with the common architecture for all other types of messaging services (IM, MMS, Email) may allow to achieve co-hosting synergies (e.g. implement MMS and SMS on a single platform) Potential Downsides Loss of transparency for Home A Home A will not know whether the recipient was roaming and will also not definitely know whether or not the SM was delivered On the other hand Home B has better means to preserve the privacy of the recipient user Could silently extend the SMS Interworking agreement between Home A and Home B to scenario 5. Home A will have to pay also termination charges for short messages sent to roaming subscribers to Home B Need to re-negotiate (extend) existing SMS interworking agreements?
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Impacts of SMS home routing

Potential Benefits
May fix some strange effects that some short messages do not reach the recipient although SMS interworking is in place Allows Home B to implement additional services, e.g. persistent SMS storage on a network server, SMS redirection, better Spam Control Aligns SMS with the common architecture for all other types of messaging services (IM, MMS, Email) may allow to achieve co-hosting synergies (e.g. implement MMS and SMS on a single platform)

Potential Downsides
Loss of transparency for Home A (APMN) Home A will not know whether the recipient was roaming and will also not definitely know whether or not the SM was delivered On the other hand Home B has better means to preserve the privacy of the recipient user Could silently extend the SMS Interworking agreement between Home A and Home B to scenario 5. Home A will have to pay also termination charges for short messages sent to roaming subscribers to Home B Need to re-negotiate (extend) existing SMS interworking agreements?

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The issue zoomed-in in greater detail

What its not SMS Home routing is not a matter of charging principles BA.27 explicitly allows (and always has allowed) to raise termination charges for SMs sent to roamers What it is SMS Home Routing is a matter for signed AA.19s and the standard scope of an AA.19 based interworking agreement (Scenario 1) which explicitly excludes the roaming case irrespective of the actual routing of the SMS One primary reason why the roaming scenario is excluded from the existing agreements is the complexity of corresponding Billing processes

Scenario descriptions (quoted from AA.19)

"Scenario 1 (Detailed in Annex 1) SMS sent from an APMN Operator and transferred to a Customer of an HPMN Operator when the Customer of the HPMN Operator is located on the network of the HPMN Operator (HPMN Operator charges the APMN Operator for SMS MT not reverse charged). [] Scenario 5 SMS sent from the APMN Operator to Customers of the HPMN Operator roaming on a third party PMN network. As international roaming SMS traffic, this scenario is governed by the existing PRDs of BARG and the relevant charging principles of the International GSM roaming arrangements between the parties involved. 2007 Copyright GSM Association 10/01/2013 7 RESTRICTED

Additional considerations
Realistically it will not be possible to prevent Home Operators from implementing the SMS Home Routing Option . as there are a number of advantages for the SMS service as such which cannot be achieved with the traditional architecture Accordingly we need to accept that this solution is in the marketplace
It is not clear how many operators have already implemented Home Routing or are planning to do so Accordingly it is unclear whether the impacts on wholesale revenue streams will be considerable or neglectable

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Ad hoc recommendation to IWG members

New SMS Interworking agreements
For new SMS interworking agreements check carefully whether the standard scenario description from AA.19 meets your requirements Have you or your interworking partner (where acting as Home Operator) already Home Routing in place or are there intentions to introduce it? Then you may want to adjust the scenario description in AA.19 according to your needs (i.e. include scenario 5 into the scope)

Existing SMS Interworking agreements

Home operators who have implemented SMS home routing and have used the standard AA.19 scenario description could be challenged by their interworking partners as they have silently extended the scope of their interworking agreement (charge for more than was agreed) These operators are urged to notify the use of Home Routing to their Interworking partners and to re-negotiate their existing agreements accordingly It was reported that in some cases Home Operators who have implemented SMS Home Routing do not charge the APMN for messages sent to roamers In this case the Home Operator formally complies with the standard AA.19, the APMN operator will not be able to reconcile the invoice properly, though.

Ideally, Home Routing should only be switched on for an Interworking relationship after the interworking agreement has been updated
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Forthcoming activities
Assess and discuss the need for an update of to AA.19 Look at Home Routing in the context of SMS Hubbing
at first sight it seems that there are no impacts

Check on the need for standardised technical options which allow to switch on/off SMS Home Routing on a per APMN basis

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Thanks for your attention!

Any Questions?!

Axel.Doerner@vodafone.com +491735277885

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Backup

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Billing for SMS Interworking scenario 5 Illustration of complexity of a TAP based cascading billing approach
VPMN
TAP SMS-MT records Zoom in what would need to be done The Home network would need to analyse the incoming TAP3 SMS MT records and to identify chargeable interworking events based upon the SMSC address which in turn would identify the APMN TAP records however could be late and therefore proper collection of all records which are relevant for a given invoice can be difficult. Unfortunately neither the transfer of (normally zero charged) SMS-MT records as such nor the correct population of the SMSC address is reliable/enforceable

HPMN
Bulk Charges? Summary records? Detail records?

APMN

Impacts
Typically the interworking bill issued by HPMN will not cover exactly all SMS MTs received during the billing interval In order to make the Interworking bill reconcilable the APMN will need detail information on what is actually covered by the bill This could be summary records on a daily/per VPMN basis but potentially even detail records are needed.

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Adds significant complexity which would make the overall SMS interworking billing much more fragile, instable and expensive! The added complexity is one reason why scenario 5 2007 Copyright GSM Association 13 has deliberately been excluded from AA.19 RESTRICTED