Optimizing cost and quality of international calls routing using multi-objective optimization techniques

As millions of minutes are being exchanged between international telecom carriers on daily basis, transit and termination of international voice calls (or long distance calls) is considered among the main revenue generators for telecom carriers all over the world. The objective of international telecom carriers is to offer the best quality calls at the cheapest cost to sustain the highest profitability. This objective requires them to ensure a continuous optimization of the cost-quality combination. However, optimizing between the best (quality) and the cheapest (cost) is becoming a very complex task especially with the very dynamic nature of the international telecom market on the technical as well as the commercial levels. Considering the capacity of the interconnections between a carrier and its suppliers adds to the complexity of the problem as it forces the carrier to be selective in what traffic to pass and on which routes to send it in order to achieve the best outcome. In this paper we are proposing a decision support system to distribute the traffic on the available routes considering their capacity in view of the observed quality, profitability and forecasted traffic for the planning time period. The proposed model was found to be effective in solving the problem considering the decision maker´s preferences.