Mobile Application Part

The Mobile Application Part (MAP) is an SS7 protocol that provides an application layer for the various nodes in GSM and UMTS mobile core networks and GPRS core networks to communicate with each other in order to provide services to users. The Mobile Application Part is the application-layer protocol used to access the Home Location Register, Visitor Location Register, Mobile Switching Center, Equipment Identity Register, Authentication Centre, Short message service center and Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN).

Facilities provided

The primary facilities provided by MAP are:

* Mobility Services: location management (to support roaming), authentication, managing service subscription information, fault recovery,
* Operation and Maintenance: subscriber tracing, retrieving a subscriber's IMSI
* Call Handling: routing, managing calls whilst roaming, checking that a subscriber is available to receive calls
* Supplementary Services
* Short Message Service
* Packet Data Protocol (PDP) services for GPRS: providing routing information for GPRS connections
* Location Service Management Services: obtaining the location of subscriber

Published specification

The Mobile Application Part specifications were originally defined by the GSM Association, but are now controlled by ETSI/ 3GPP. MAP is defined by two different standards, depending upon the mobile network type:

* MAP for GSM (prior to Release 4) is specified b
3GPP TS 09.02
(MAP v1, MAP v2)
* MAP for UMTS ("3G") and GSM (Release 99 and lat