Belgacom ICS Certified As GSMA Compliant Roaming Hub

Belgium based, Belgacom ICS has announced the successful completion of the self-certification process of its Open Connectivity Roaming Hub. With the Open Connectivity (OC) Initiative, the GSMA is looking for new ways to set up Interconnection and Roaming relationships between mobile operators through a hub as an alternative to implementing one-to-one roaming relationships across the world's GSM networks. This follows the existing achievements of the Open Connectivity SMS Interworking Hub for which Belgacom ICS was the first to be certified.

Recently Belgacom ICS successfully participated in the Roaming Hub trial involving 29 operators and 10 vendors from across the globe, carried out over 830 tests. During the trial, Belgacom ICS performed Intrahub and Interhub tests for; GSM, GPRS, CAMEL and 3G roaming with 9 other operators and also another Hub. The outcome is that now via a single operational and technical relationship, (such as Belgacom ICS' Instant Roaming Hub), operators gain interoperability , in tandem with significantly reducing operational complexity which results in enabling them to provide their subscribers a better and quicker global footprint for all services.

"As a highly valued partner of over 200 mobile operators worldwide, we are very happy to have successfully performed the certification process," said Daniel Kurgan, CEO Belgacom ICS. "The 2008 trial helped us to assess a very detailed specification of the Hub to perfect the technologies. We are confident that mobile operators connected to Belgacom ICS' Instant Roaming Hub will experience the value-add of choosing for a proven service that will provide them a single IMSI Open Connectivity certified Roaming Hub solution."

Posted to the site on 6th February 2009