Wireless Communication Service Providers (CSP) are required to comply with legal and regulatory requirements to support Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) selectively intercept individual subscribers communication. Only with court orders, a LEA can issue a Lawful Intercept (LI) request to CSP on a PLMN which the LAE has jurisdiction on. A LEA based in the United States can issue LI request on US based PLMN. However, it cannot issue such request on European Union PLMN. A roamer in foreign PLMN can be wiretapped for an LI request from the foreign LEA having the jurisdiction.
When intercept is authorized, the CSP provisions the Network Elements (NE) for LI and shares the information with the LAE. The CSP allows the LAE access to their network elements carrying voice, data and messaging services and to collect subscriber data usage from the network .
To intercept the subscriber communication, the LEA must have subscriber information. In mobile communications, the HLR/HSS holds the subscriber data. When these network elements are hosted outside of the USA, Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) becomes a challenges for the US government and its LAEs to intercept and monitor communication, as well ass get call information.
The business problem to solve for a US based Tier-1 CSP with global internet-of-things (IoT) deployment is to redeploy EU based HLR/HSS to US based cloud environment for specific IMSI ranges. The solution is based on NOKIA HLR/HSS, OneNDS, integrated with existing CSP STP/DRA, Aqsacom LI solutions, Key Exchange server, MMEs, GW, among other service support systems. The challenge that present itself is how to drive multiple vendors, cross-functional and cross-organization teams to converge on a solution that is amiable to the CSP, while not overloading the development teams.
Our SME was employed by a third party for Nokia to server on the Customer Onboarding team. He provided technical leadership and management as the customer-facing technical point of contact for the CSP. He supported of NOKIA Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) network element and services deployment, to serve US-based subscribers. The actions taken are:
- Co-authored the High-Level Solution Design (HLSD) document detailing the integration architecture and corresponding solution requirements. Includes the overall architecture, integration with STP, DRA, HLR/HSS, OnceNDS, lawful intercept, key exchange, OSS integration, inter and intra-site resiliency, local and geographical redundancy, data resiliency and integrity, overload control, 2G/3G and 4G registration call flows, physical architecture, and security.
- Devising a Customer Information Questionnaire (CIQs) detailing the interface specifications and parameters for end-to-end service enablement.
- Developed HLSD to enhance Key Exchange in NOKIA customized SoftAuC design. The design included the use cases, system context and use cases diagrams, models, architecture and system requirements, FCAPS, call flows, security considerations, and physical architecture.
- Lead and supported negotiation of product interfaces, solution requirements and the associated validation with the CSPon one side and with vendors and NOKIA teams on the other sides.
With this effort, he was able to lock-in customer requirements to meet project launch date, contain development costs, avoid feature creep, minimize inconsistencies, as well as smoothly drive Nokia’s downstream development, integration, test and operation teams to successful project conclusion.
Mission accomplished!