HLR (Number lookup)

Home Location Register is a service that ViaNett provides to its customers to determine the home country and the home network of a mobile subscriber. It can also be used to find the current  country the subscriber is roaming in right now. The service basically supports all GSM networks around the world.

What is HLR?

HLR Lookup is a way to determine the home network of a mobile subscriber. HLR is also used to find what country the subscriber is roaming in right now.

This technique is normally used together with SMS Delivery and SMS Billing to check what network you should send the messages to. It can also be used to check if a subscriber is reachable or if the user is absent (i.e. has turned off the phone).

Service

The Network Query is a service in regards to Mobile Number Portability (MNP), enabling the identification to which network a mobile phone number (MSISDN) belongs to. This service is also referred to as "IMSI-lookup", "Network Look up Service" or "HLR Lookup". Available for more than 734 networks, providing visibility of ported numbers for 192 countries (confirmed coverage November 2009).

ViaNett’s HLR Service

ViaNett offers access to around 5 different HLR Gateways, which can give you MCC, MNC, IMSI, MSC and error messages like invalid number or absent user. What information you might get depends on gateway selected and country.

MCC / MNC Codes:

By having the MCC and MNC information, you can determine whether the subscriber has ported their number to a different network compared with the operator prefix of the number. A Mobile Network Code (MNC) is used in combination with a Mobile Country Code (MCC) to uniquely identify a mobile phone operator/carrier.

IMSI

Some of our HLR Gateways can query the 15 digit IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity number) of the mobile subscriber's phone number (MSISDN). The IMSI is a unique number which identifies the mobile subscribers in GSM and UMTS networks. Querying the IMSI provides subscriber information for authentication and authorization of the user in mobile security applications and scenarios, such as in online banking. The knowledge on IMSI number allows also enables certain Push to Talk (PTT) services.

MSC

MSC is short for Mobile Switching Centre and knowing the MSC information enables you to determine the approximate location of the mobile user.

HLR features

(*) By request, it is possible to implement an asynchronous notification immediately when the handset is turned on.

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