Promote roaming accessibility and awareness within the ECOWAS region through transparent communication, network management, and cost controls.
Market Challenges
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Free Roaming initiative significantly enhances regional connectivity in West Africa. Its goal is to eliminate high roaming charges, enabling citizens to access mobile services at local rates while traveling within member countries. But what challenges do local operators face in implementing this framework?
Operators can face a significant challenge in effectively educating travelers about the ECOWAS Free Roaming Initiative. Without clear, context-aware, and transparent pricing communication, users risk encountering bill shock, which affects trust and hinders roaming adoption. This is especially important for multiple trips within and outside the ECOWAS region during the same travel journey. Operators require reliable tools to ensure compliance, build customer confidence, and maximize revenue opportunities.
Accidental Roaming
A significant number of subscribers in the region are prepaid. According to the new ECOWAS regulations, roaming must be automatically enabled for all subscribers without requiring special subscriptions, unless they opt out. Without safeguards against accidental roaming, particularly near border areas, many subscribers may unintentionally connect to foreign networks, potentially resulting in substantial revenue loss for operators.
Service Abuse
With the elimination of surcharges for incoming calls, operators in the ECOWAS region should stay vigilant against potential service abuse scenarios. A typical case is arbitrage, where SIM cards from countries with low domestic costs are extensively used in higher-cost markets. Another form of service abuse is SIM Box Fraud, in which fraudsters terminate calls within the visited country, bypassing international call termination fees and negatively affecting operators' revenues. Operators require real-time call control to prevent fraud before it happens.
Boost Roaming Usage with Transparent Pricing Communication
Cover all travel scenarios, including local rates in ECOWAS countries, reminders, campaign validity, and multiple trips in and out of the region during the same travel journey. Define restriction logics, such as the home country reset period that determines the number of days a subscriber must stay home after returning from a trip before becoming eligible again for the ECOWAS free roaming benefit.
Optimize Costs and Prevent Leakages
Prevent accidental roaming scenarios, including data costs due to app refresh, by automatically disabling the initiation of data sessions for specific segments of subscribers. Ensure only legitimate traffic is allowed without disrupting service quality.
Intuitive, unified, and interactive ECOWAS campaign configuration.
Personalization and restriction controls to guarantee contextually relevant messages.
Online API interface provisioning to multiple systems, such as billing, CRM, and external BI.
Campaign success tracking, including historical travels.
Revenue protection by preventing accidental roaming in border areas.
Automates border cell identification and reporting.
Pull-back capability to ensure immediate return once coverage is restored.
Real-time enforcement of fraud protection measures during call setup and ongoing calls.
From transparent pricing communication that encourages roaming usage to effective network controls for service abuse prevention and border roaming management.
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