international wholesale solutions
Orange statement on voice
Conversation, and more specifically voice, is at the heart of communication in every part of the world. Voice activities continue to grow in volume, and remain our core business. However, without any action, this growth is likely to be threatened by fraud which is on a tremendous rise. In order to avoid and mitigate fraud while serving end-customers with quality and reliability, carriers must react jointly. They must work even more closely and establish open partnerships. In this highly competitive sector, ITW is a privileged meeting point allowing carriers to strengthen cooperation and move voice business forward.
International voice is still on the rise
Voice volumes continue to grow, even during harsh economic times, due in large part to the growth of over-the-top players like Skype or Google. Traditional voice has continued to grow.
All in all, voice still represents a significant share of operators’ business today, responsible for roughly 75% of operators’ revenues in 2010(source: Idate 2011). Although the annual growth rate of voice revenues is constantly decreasing and new threats are emerging, voice will remain the key contributor to mobile service revenues.
Innovation is the driving force behind carriers’ voice interconnection
Throughout the evolution of the telecommunications industry and despite disruptive technologies, carriers have constantly adapted and innovated their technologies to ensure the required voice interconnections needed to terminate voice calls on any network. Carriers are committed to security and quality thanks to a closed and fully managed network. They can manage VoIP calls made over their network, and provide enough bandwidth needed to ensure their success. Drawing on their expertise of international traffic management, only carriers can offer the different levels of quality expected. They are able to anticipate traffic and optimize routes through low-cost routing. In the long run, we believe they will continue to offer a high level of performance to their retail customers.
International carriers are fully embracing IP technology, allowing: increased flexibility, reduced costs and access to new services such as HD voice. They are making significant investments in the ability to offer VoIP with the same level of quality as traditional voice, and in some cases even better.
Fraud remains a major concern for all carriers
For some years now, there has been international expansion of fraud which threatens more and more carriers’ revenues and reputation. Fraud can take many different forms that are usually highly sophisticated and can be undetectable. The telecom industry is a target of choice for criminal organisations for several reasons: wide range of relays, lack of transparency of interconnected routes, intangible transactions and invisible flows, speed of transactions, emergence of new products and services for payment. In addition to the well-known Telco frauds, we are now experiencing the development of non Telco frauds in our industry.
Enhanced cooperation between carriers
In order to better stop the fraud growing phenomenon, carriers need to work closely. They must cooperate with both international and domestic carriers to detect and reduce by pass fraud. Carriers need to take collective action to develop technical and legal means to fight fraud. They also need to increase their lobbying and strengthen their relations with all international authorities dealing with fraud. Close cooperation between carriers will allow to develop useful tools such as formal sharing of information on reported cases. Carriers could for instance set up a common database of all major incidents and issue warnings regarding both the type of fraud and the type of organisation involved. Through the ITW Council, carriers will set up a task force that will make recommendations and take several actions with a view to establishing a proactive anti-fraud policy.
