PR releases

In 2006 Meucci Solutions detected 50,000 SIM boxes in Europe

Ghent, 12 January 2007. – In 2006, the company Meucci Solutions, who specialise in quality measurements between telecom networks, detected over 50,000 SIM boxes, predominantly on European mobile operators.

SIM boxes, also known as GSM gateways, are used to bypass the interconnection and divert international calls to national GSM calls, thus evading revenue that operators are entitled to. Losses can easily amount to €3,500 per SIM box annually.

In addition to the financial loss, SIM boxes also diminish the image of the mobile operator. The SIM box bypass results in lower quality for the end-user. The result is that the unsuspecting subscriber discovers he has poor call quality, has to try several times before his call succeeds, his call suddenly breaks off, or the number of the person calling him is masked. The end-user unjustly blames this on the poor quality of his operator's network.

Ready-to-use reports

The 50,000 SIM boxes are the result of tests conducted for 25 customers in 13 European countries. The tests are sent out centrally from Ghent and conducted on Meucci Solutions’ own network of probes that are currently to be found in 40 countries already, spread over Europe, South-East Asia, Australia and North America. This platform is being expanded further throughout the world in 2007.

The platform consists of probes equipped with modems containing SIM cards, and telephone lines from the telecom operators in each country. Meucci Solutions lets these probes make different kinds of calls to each other continually. This enables a measurement of quality from the viewpoint of the end-user. The many thousands of test results are then analysed by a team of experts in Ghent (Belgium). The end-result for the mobile operator is a ready-to-use report with a list of SIM box numbers against which can then be de-activated.

Ambitious growth plans

Meucci Solutions is growing rapidly because of the strong demand for quality measurements amongst the various telephone networks. Conrad Tuytte, CEO: “We are a young company and 2006 really was a breakthrough year for us. We are making contracts with nearly 30 mobile operators, including three of the European top five. 2007 will also be a crucial year for us – we are launching a number of new products and will be expanding our operations to America, the Asia and the Near East. The new products, such as Roaming Implementation and VoIP Monitoring confirm the philosophy of Meucci Solutions and offer our customer added value that can be measured directly. We aim to give our customers a complete picture of the traffic passing through their networks. This means that we test both voice and data traffic, both from and to fixed and mobile networks. This makes us a unique partner for the operators.”

About Meucci Solutions (www.meucci-solutions.com)

Meucci Solutions (Gent, Belgium) offers a unique suite of value-adding services to monitor, test and analyze roaming, interconnection and fraud. The product portfolio includes total solutions such as SIM box detection and roaming implementation, monitoring solutions such as VoIP business monitoring, and roaming and interconnect quality of service monitoring. The service-oriented approach minimizes the operational impact on the customers. All of the products and services are based on the Global Monitoring and Testing Platform of Meucci Solutions, a network of probes which is currently active in over 40 countries and is continuing to expand.