Publications & Reports - Document Abstract
Michal Ficek, Lukáš Kencl
Improving Roamer Retention by Exposing Weak Locations in GSM Networks
International Conference On Emerging Networking Experiments And Technologies CoNEXT 2009
ACM CoNEXT Student Workshop
December 1-4, 2009 | Rome, Italy
Due to pricing policies set by network operators, roaming clients are among the most valuable clients of GSM cellular networks. Despite that each operator applies a lot of effort in network signal coverage in order to achieve the best conditions for roaming traffic in the network, there still remain hardly detectable locations where roaming clients are getting lost to rival networks. This paper presents a method for revealing roaming traffic weak locations, based on active tracking of roamers in a live GSM network. We define the problem scope using formal description of the active tracking process and propose a metric for evaluating network weakness, together with intuitive visualization of weak locations. We shortly conclude with plans for ongoing research.