To stay competitive, wireless operators need to permit their customers to use their services even when they are traveling outside of their home networks. Introducing roaming service support, however, is costly and cumbersome, both for you and for your users. With PortaSwitch you can deploy roaming services using WiFi and a mobile application at no cost and with no extra charges to your users.
The voice over WiFi solution, introduced with this release, includes PortaSwitch and a third-party WiFi Roaming platform, which updates the users’ mobile carrier about their current location. Thus, when a user is in roaming, all incoming calls to them arrive to PortaSwitch, which then delivers them to the user’s mobile application.
This is how it works in more detail:
When a user connects to WiFi and the mobile application registers with PortaSwitch (1), PortaSwitch forwards the user’s registration to the third-party WiFi Roaming platform (2). The third-party WiFi Roaming platform passes the user’s current location to the user’s mobile carrier within the LU (Location Update) message (3).
When someone dials the user’s phone number (1), the mobile carrier addresses the third-party WiFi Roaming platform with a PRN (Provide Roaming Number) message (2). The third-party WiFi Roaming platform responds with the user’s local roaming number and prefix (3) based upon which their mobile carrier routes the call to PortaSwitch via SIP (4). PortaSwitch then processes the call and delivers it to the user’s mobile application (5).
To instruct PortaSwitch to forward user registrations to the third-party WiFi Roaming platform, define its IP address for the third_party_registrars option on the Configuration server web interface.
PortaSwitch operates in the high-availability mode; therefore, it forwards user registrations in the "fire-and-forget" mode. In case of an unlikely network connectivity issue between PortaSwitch and the third-party WiFi Roaming platform, the registration will be updated when the application renews it in a few minutes.
With this solution, you introduce roaming service support at no cost, allow your customers to receive incoming calls free of charge, and make outgoing calls at reduced rates. This increases your competitiveness in the market and improves customer experience.
