The GSM Association has awarded NeuStar the job of managing Root Domain Name System services for its membership, which accounts for more than 680 global GSM mobile operators.

NeuStar will manage a private but common directory for shared DNS services that will allow GSM network operators worldwide to interoperate and allow roaming and home network users to access mobile data, content and multimedia services across networks.

GSM operators that belong to the GSMA account for more than 1.5 billion subscribers across 210 countries and territories. NeuStar has a global footprint with 27 data centers around the world that provide IP and DNS services. It will use that infrastructure to provide similar service to the GSMA.

“This is a huge operational undertaking with many carriers, but it is something we are quite used to since a lot of our other services similarly support 1000s of carriers at the same time,” said Mark Foster, senior vice president and chief technology officer at NeuStar.

Although called a domain name service, this implementation will provide more of what Foster called a “deep network routing capability” that mobile operators will use along with their backbone providers to route and facilitate mobile data and content service delivery, a role similar to that of a service control point in the SS7-based Intelligent Network.

NeuStar’s Root DNS service will both register domain names under the suffixes gprs and 3gppnetwork.org, which are used to register private domain names that allow operators to retrieve routing information when a subscriber accesses data and multimedia services on a roaming or home network, as well as operate the master DNS root server and provide updates to GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) providers.

The service is expected to play a vital role in the mobile industry for data and content services such as MMS, push-to-talk over Cellular (PoC), and IP multimedia services.

NeuStar and its operator customers will engage in a phased transition that will begin soon after the new year. “You don’t do anything new right before the holidays so it will be shortly after,” Foster said.

As for the business impact to NeuStar, Foster said, “Given these services are relatively early in their wide-scale deployment, our expectations are very modest in the near term, but we are quite confident that as wireless content data service are more widely deployed, we will likewise participate in that upside.”