International mobile services on border zones

Background:

The provision of mobile services on countries’ border zones presents specific problems related to the identification of users’ home networks and the consequent charging of calls originated at those locations. Users at border zones can often be inadvertently identified as being in roaming by the networks of mobile operators from the neighbouring countries, when in fact they are within the borders of their own country, and are wrongly charged as in roaming by the neighbouring countries’ operator.

This situation of inadvertent international roaming is a service inefficiency that, taking into consideration the high prices of international roaming service, results in bill-shock to the end consumers. Solving this inefficiency is a challenge to both regulators and mobile operators.