Patent ID: 7248871

Claim:
A method of identifying areas for improving radio communications coverage in a mobile radio network under analysis, the method comprising detecting cancel location signalling data communicated between a home subscriber database of a home mobile network of mobile user equipment and a visitor subscriber database of the analysed mobile radio network cancelling a registration of the mobile user equipment from the visitor subscriber database of the analysed mobile radio network, the cancel location signalling data including mobile subscriber identifiers of the mobile user equipment, detecting location update signalling data informing the home subscriber database of the home network that the mobile user equipment is to be registered as having roamed to a visitor subscriber database of at least one other mobile network, the location update including identifiers of the visitor subscriber database and the mobile subscriber identifiers of the user equipment being registered, detecting service signalling data associated with mobile originated calls made by the mobile user equipment to the analysed mobile network, the service signalling data including mobile subscriber identifiers of the mobile user equipment and identifiers of cells of the analysed mobile radio network from which the mobile originated calls were made, correlating the cancel location signalling data and the update location signalling data with respect to the mobile subscriber identifiers of the mobile user equipment to identify mobile subscribers lost to the other mobile network, and identifying areas of relative loss of service of the analysed mobile radio network by identifying, from the mobile subscriber identifiers, a number of the lost mobile subscribers which had made mobile originated calls via cells identified by the cell identifiers of the service signalling data.