It is sharing this information and authenticating
the subscriber that presents the challenge.
It is also the challenge of preventing unauthorized access from hackers and fraudsters.
The GSM community has learned many lessons already on this front and has
been successful in eliminating many forms of fraud today through new procedures and
technologies in the network. For example, to prevent eavesdropping on the air interface
(a common practice in the early days of GSM used to obtain the subscriber??™s identity),
GSM operators implemented encryption over the air interface. This prevented eavesdropping
and was responsible for all but eliminating cloning of cell phones.
Wireless service providers have built a model that not only protects them from unauthorized
access to their services, but allows them to share certain details about their
subscribers as they roam into other networks. And they can do so with confidence that
they have a fair amount of security. They have achieved this by implementing wireless
technologies in such a way as to eliminate opportunities for fraud.
So when IP is introduced into a traditional telecommunications network, it represents
many challenges for the operator. Certainly when wireless providers began deploying
IP in their networks, they found issues with making it work as their networks
operate today. They found there was a lack of implementation standards that defined
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how networks were to communicate with one another, and no standards to support
authentication in an IP world.
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