Roaming Market Share Estimation via Interconnect Sampling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for estimating outbound and inbound roaming market shares in mobile networks lack accuracy and are not suitable for inter-operator carriers to estimate market shares for multiple customers across geographical areas, as they rely on limited visibility and generate only relative or incomplete data, making it difficult for carriers to negotiate better tariffs and understand competitor activity.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that uses an interconnect facility to maintain frequent roamer information, generate sample sets of frequent roamers, and poll them for location requests to determine relative and absolute market share distributions across visited networks, allowing inter-operator carriers to estimate outbound and inbound roaming market shares with minimal additional signaling and without requiring knowledge of individual subscribers' locations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If existing methods rely on single network operator registers and direct signalling analysis, then implementation complexity is reduced, but measurement precision and reliability of roaming market share estimation deteriorate due to limited visibility
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines data from multiple network operators' registers and signalling information through a centralized processing system. This merging of previously siloed data sources enables comprehensive roaming market share estimation that overcomes the limited visibility of individual operators while distributing implementation complexity across multiple participants.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a intermediary processing system that collects, correlates, and analyzes roaming data from multiple network operators. This intermediary layer reconciles data from different sources and produces accurate market share estimates without requiring any single operator to implement the entire complex solution alone.
2Measurement precision
If SMS traffic analysis is used for inbound roaming market share estimation, then measurement precision improves, but loss of time increases due to requirement of certain SMS traffic volume
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary actions by continuously collecting and pre-processing roaming data from network registers and signalling, maintaining ready-to-analyze datasets. When market share estimation is needed, the analysis can be performed immediately on pre-collected data rather than waiting for sufficient SMS traffic to accumulate, thus reducing time loss while maintaining precision.
3Measurement precision
If location polling is performed on all mobile subscribers, then measurement precision of roaming market share improves, but use of energy and signaling overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial action by selecting and polling only a representative sample of mobile subscribers rather than all subscribers. This sampling approach provides sufficient statistical precision for market share estimation while dramatically reducing signaling overhead and energy consumption compared to universal polling.
4Reliability
If frequent roamer information is maintained for all subscribers, then reliability of roaming market share estimation improves, but device complexity and loss of information increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and maintains frequent roamer information only for subscribers who exhibit roaming behavior patterns, rather than maintaining data for all subscribers. This selective extraction approach improves estimation reliability by focusing on relevant data while reducing device complexity and preventing information overload.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method for outbound/inbound roaming market share estimation comprises estimation of the distribution of outbound roamers (300; 400) of a home mobile communication network (H) over visited mobile communication networks (A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6) in one or more geographical area (A, B, C) as follows: a. maintaining frequent roamer information (RS1, RS2, RS3, ...) for subscribers (S1, S2, S3, ...) of the home mobile communication network (H); b. generating a sample set of frequent outbound roamers of the home mobile communication network (H); c. polling each mobile subscriber in the sample set with a location request; d. analysing replies to the location request to determine geographical areas and visited mobile communication networks therefrom; and e. determining a relative distribution (300) of outbound roamers of the home mobile communication network (H) across geographical areas (A, B, C) and/or visited mobile communication networks (A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6).