Written by Amy Ralls | Jul 12, 2022 4:00:00 AM
BICS and XConnect work together to mitigate OBR surcharges and strengthen anti-fraud offerings
London, UK - July 12, 2022 - XConnect, a Somos Company, the provider of world-class numbering intelligence solutions has partnered with BICS, a leading international communications enabler, to deploy XConnect’s Global Number Range (GNR) services, supporting the fight against fraud in its voice offering. BICS gains access to XConnect’s high quality, proven data solution to also reduce Origin Based Rating (OBR) surcharge losses. Through the partnership, XConnect and BICS are also undertaking joint product development, with BICS providing valuable insights to strengthen XConnect’s offering. XConnect’s solution enables fraud management for voice routing through real-time detection and blocking of high-cost A numbers, using unallocated and ‘known high cost’ range intelligence. The partnership allows BICS to harness XConnect’s centralised numbering intelligence solution to further enhance its voice and fraud offerings. Head of Voice and P2P Messaging at BICS, Georg Vranken commented,
“Telecoms fraud is a global threat, requiring a global response and industry collaboration. Our partnership with XConnect has been a very positive one, based on a common belief in the need for constant innovation and investment in the fight against fraud.” The partnership builds on BICS’ five-year customer relationship with XConnect. BICS offers immediate access to more than 800 mobile networks worldwide from 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE and NB-IoT for consumers and IoT applications. Its roaming solution serves more than 220 mobile operators and 1.2 billion consumers and IoT devices around the world. “Fighting voice fraud is more important for carriers than it’s ever been. To overcome this growing challenge, carriers have to explore new ways to combat sophisticated levels of fraud and take a holistic approach to identifying and mitigating emerging risks across their networks,” said Tim Ward, VP Number Information Services at XConnect. “The quality of our GNR data has been recognised by BICS, enabling it to further strengthen its voice routing and fraud solutions. Together, we are committed to the success of our strategic partnership and will continue to develop and refine our offering to give carriers increased visibility into their traffic.” XConnect’s GNR covers 14,000 operators in 233 territories. It is carrier-grade and scalable to support billions of minutes per month. It has a track record of successfully delivering 99.999% accuracy when returning queries to its database.
About BICS As a communications platform company, BICS is at the heart of the communications ecosystem, bridging telecommunications services, and the needs of enterprises. Our solutions – from global voice services, seamless roaming and IoT enablement, to global messaging – are essential for supporting today’s data-hungry consumers and digitally driven enterprises. Headquartered in Brussels, with a strong presence in Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Middle East, BICS enables every person, application and thing to connect simply and securely, wherever they are. Learn more at
www.bics.com.
About XConnect XConnect, a wholly owned subsidiary of Somos Inc, consolidates, maintains and delivers trusted telephone number intelligence to world leading telecommunication service providers. It processes information from hundreds of different global datasets and ensures that customers solve routing, validation and fraud challenges in real time. XConnect’s Number Information Services are used for voice and messaging routing, fraud protection and to identify and validate insights. They also support the deployment and evolution of next-generation communications, such as VoLTE and RCS. Its service is accessed through its global distributed hybrid cloud platform using simple, secure, scalable real-time protocols and APIs. To learn more about XConnect, visit
www.xconnect.net.