Fair Isaac and Optel Informatik announced the mobile industry's first Near Real-Time Roaming Data Exchange (NRTRDE) gateway to help wireless operators worldwide prevent roaming fraud
The NRTRDE gateway connects Fair Isaac's RoamEx® Roamer Data Exchanger network to Optel's MEGS-R network, enabling an automatic, two-way exchange of roaming traffic in near real time. The resulting combined coverage forms the world's largest NRTRDE network, with more than 90 mobile operator networks involved.
Roaming fraud accounts for a high proportion of all fraud in telecommunications. It occurs when a mobile phone subscriber who does not intend to pay for service roams from the service provider's network to another operator network and takes advantage of the home operator's delayed access to the subscriber's call detail records while roaming. An individual roaming fraud incident can result in a loss of more than €1 million (US$ 1.3 million) within a matter of a few days.
As the trade association for the world's leading global mobile standard with more than two billion subscribers, the GSM Association has recognized this problem and has decided to pursue NRTRDE adoption by all GSM operators by October 2008.
By linking their RoamEx and MEGS-R systems, Fair Isaac and Optel can offer unsurpassed roaming call visibility to operators who subscribe to either network. Operators connected to either RoamEx or the MEGS-R system automatically receive call records for their roaming subscribers from anywhere in the combined network, greatly reducing their roaming fraud exposure.
"The combination of RoamEx coverage in the Americas with Optel's EMEA coverage aligns well with our goal to provide customers with global NRTRDE coverage," said James Stewart, associate partner of client services, Telecom, for Fair Isaac, who also chairs the Roaming Subgroup of the GSMA Fraud Forum. "As more operators look to follow the GSMA's NRTRDE initiative, they will require a NRTRDE solution that provides them with maximum coverage. A roaming fraud solution is only as good as the coverage provided, because it can only detect roaming fraud in operator networks where it has been deployed."
"We are proud to take another milestone in the fight against roaming fraud," added Markus Dicks, Managing Director of Optel Informatik. "With this connection of the two largest NRTRDE networks, we can offer our customers much higher fraud visibility and that is what counts. This advantage will be available for customers on both sides of the network, and linking them together boosts the CDR data exchange volume dramatically."
Fair Isaac's RoamEx solution serves over 70 operators including 95 percent of the Americas market, while Optel's MEGS-R solution serves major operators, including T-Mobile, in Europe. By linking these two systems, Optel and Fair Isaac can offer unsurpassed roaming call visibility to operators who subscribe to either system.
About Optel Informatik
Optel Informatik is a leading provider of fraud management and revenue assurance solutions. With its current key products MEGS (Fraud Management) and CashBack (Revenue Assurance) it is helping operators worldwide to detect any type of fraud, to analyze risky subscribers and validate an operators billing chain for any type of Revenue Loss. Optel Near-to-Real-time products as such protect more than 200 million subscribers, analysing more than 1 billion transactions per day. Optel's growing NRTRDE network has been live since 2002; it is the key component in the Optel portfolio of products to fight Roaming Fraud. Learn more about Optel Informatik on www.optel-informatik.de.
About Fair Isaac
Fair Isaac (NYSE:FIC) makes decisions smarter. The company's solutions and technologies for Enterprise Decision Management give businesses the power to automate more processes, and apply more intelligence to every customer interaction. Through increasing the precision, consistency and agility of their decisions, Fair Isaac clients worldwide increase sales, build customer value, cut fraud losses, manage credit risk, reduce operational costs, meet changing compliance demands and enter new markets more profitably. Founded in 1956, Fair Isaac powers hundreds of billions of decisions per year in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, retail, consumer branded goods, healthcare and the public sector. Fair Isaac also helps millions of individuals manage their credit health through the www.myfico.com website.
Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Information
Except for historical information contained herein, the statements contained in this press release that relate to Fair Isaac, including statements regarding its RoamEx roamer data exchanger system, and the benefits to be derived from this offering, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially, including any unforeseen technical difficulties related to the implementation, use and functionality of the offering, the risks that customers will not perceive material benefits from the offering, failure of the product to deliver the expected results, the possibility of errors or defects in the offering, regulatory changes applicable to the use of consumer credit and other data, and other risks described from time to time in Fair Isaac's SEC reports, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2006, and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended December 31, 2006. Forward-looking statements should be considered with caution. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, Fair Isaac's results could differ materially from Fair Isaac's expectations in these statements. Fair Isaac disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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