Least Cost Routing and Fraud Detection with Oracle Acme Packet

Presicent Worldwide needed Least Cost Routing and telecom fraud prevention. They chose NexOSS, which does both. Result: “NexOSS helped us tighten up our network and route calls more safely and efficiently. There’s no negative to the NexOSS platform. We’re very happy with our results.”

Prescient Worldwide is a nationwide reseller of telecommunication services. Prescient delivers an industry leading proprietary Voice over the Network (VON) infrastructure. They provide businesses and individuals with a growing suite of innovative voice and data products and services using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Prescient also offers a variety of wholesale (carrier-to-carrier or carrier-to-headend) solutions. As part of its growth strategy, Prescient Worldwide aligned itself with some of the biggest and most respected names in the communications industry including AT&T, Level 3, Global Crossing, Earthlink, Paetec, Comcast, Ernest, and XO Communications.

However, negotiating multiple carrier relationships required a solution that was capable of managing all the different pricings and routes, while ensuring that Prescient saved money‐savings they could pass along to their customers. In addition, Prescient needed a solution that could help detect and deter the growing threat of telecom fraud.

Fraud can have a significant financial impact for any VoIP provider. According to a recent report, 1 in every 2,500 calls is fraudulent, and for every phone call there is a $0.57 loss. Nearly all fraudulent calling activity results from fraudsters hacking into unsuspecting business owners’ telephone systems. The business owner is completely unaware of the fraud until they receive their bill.

“People are used to the way credit card fraud works,” said Mike Pratt, CTO at Prescient. “If your card gets hacked, it’s not your fault. With telecom fraud, it’s the service provider who ends up paying for the fraudulent calls coming from customer’s hacked devices.”

To combat telecom fraud and handle complicated routing, Prescient chose to implement the NexOSS platform from TransNexus. NexOSS is an Oracle Acme Packet Open Session Routing Ecosystem application which provides Least Cost Routing for inter-state, intra-state, and international calls.

Least Cost Routing (LCR) of telephone calls is implemented by creating a routing table that matches telephone dial codes with a list of destination networks rank ordered by cost. NexOSS automates the process of quickly building an optimized least cost routing table which may have tens of millions of routes, more than enough to handle Prescient’s many carrier partners’ routes.

NexOSS is the only solution on the market that seamlessly integrates LCR and fraud detection. “Our NexOSS Least Cost Routing is great, but what we haven’t seen anywhere else is the integrated fraud detection. The biggest benefit to NexOSS is the ability to monitor fraud in a real time fashion,” said Pratt.

NexOSS detects fraud in real time, by analyzing number portability corrected LCR routing requests. This means that NexOSS can detect and re-route or block fraudulent calls before they are connected. The fraud detection feature enables targeted call blocking without impacting legitimate calls, and provides visibility into how and when fraud attempts occur.

“With NexOSS, we can protect our customers from the costly results of telecom fraud,” said Pratt. “Before working with TransNexus, combating telecom fraud attempts was almost a full time job for us. NexOSS helped us tighten up our network and route calls more safely and efficiently. There’s no negative to the NexOSS platform. We’re very happy with our results.”