A New Roaming Testing Approach for Mobile Network Operators

When mobile subscribers travel to different countries, they rely on roaming partners to deliver reliable network service. Travelers expect their devices to function as quickly and easily as they do at home. If performance lags, guess who’s first in line for blame? The customer’s primary carrier.

To ensure great international coverage, mobile operators need visibility into the customer experience across their roaming partners’ networks. Applause has launched a new Roaming Testing Service to provide mobile network operators detailed recommendations on how to improve the customer experience.

The mobile roaming market took a massive hit during the pandemic, declining by 73% — about 650 million subscribers — from 2019 to 2020, according to Juniper Research. To recover, mobile network operators (MNOs) must deliver high-quality services that meet rising consumer expectations.

Get insight into real-world roaming performance

For years, many MNOs have relied on static test probes to evaluate roaming functionality. These static probes are usually not real mobile devices and are often located in data centers and office buildings. While static probes can validate connectivity, testing with a box that’s not a real mobile device, in a fixed location, doesn’t truly emulate real-world roaming behavior. This testing approach doesn’t provide the types of intelligence your marketing and customer care teams need to understand the true customer experience.

In the real world, mobile subscribers make calls from crowded public spaces like airports and city centers, text while in cars or on trains, and use apps to stay connected on the go. You need testing that replicates customers’ true roaming experience. Yet, few MNOs can afford to send staff to test the roaming experience across all crucial locations.

With Applause, there’s a new, cost-effective way to get real insights into roaming quality of service and subscriber experience Applause provides a fully managed Roaming Testing service that assembles custom teams of digital experts to provide on-site testing using real devices. Test your top roaming destinations and performance at important global events, and build customizable test scenarios to assess the applications and features that matter most to your subscribers.

In addition to testing in both fixed and mobile environments, Applause Roaming Testing allows MNOs to examine more than just basic services — test over-the-top (OTT) app performance while roaming, as well as interactive services like customer care, top-up and SMS campaigns. Applause Roaming Testing provides detailed feedback and clear documentation of exactly what bugs testers encounter, so you can quickly take action to remedy the problem.

“Assessing the quality of our international roamers’ experience has always been a big challenge for VIVO, and for any other mobile operator,” said Paulo Barnabé, Network Manager, VIVO. “Applause’s solution can offer a new dimension and provide us with valuable insights on how our traveling customers are experiencing the service internationally.”

With a history of supporting telecom companies like BT, Swisscom, and Deutsche Telekom, Applause is proud to expand the ways we serve the industry. Learn more about our Applause Roaming Testing solution.