Cellular roaming fraud - it's still a problem

I was interested to see a press release from Aricent about its new roaming anti-fraud package for cellcos.

It seems that, despite what the cellcos tell punters, there's still a delay of up to 36 hours in their getting roaming billing information from partner networks around the world.

This is a serious potential headache for the carriers, as it means that a fraudsters could run up a massive bill in the foreign country and, by the time the roaming data reaches the `home' cellco and the account is turned off, charges of thousands of pounds can be run up.

This problem, of course, is the direct result of the greedy carriers who hammer roaming punters into the ground on charges.

Aricent, however, reckons it has a solution in the form of its Near Real Time Roaming Data Exchange (NRTRDE) technology, which it claims can get the time taken to exchange call billing data down to just four hours.

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Which is not bad, especially if you're unlucky enough to lose your mobile whilst abroad and don't realise it in time...