9.4 Roaming and Access Restrictions

38.3003GPPNRNR and NG-RAN Overall descriptionRelease 17Stage 2TS

The roaming and access restriction information for a UE includes information on restrictions to be applied for subsequent mobility action during CM-CONNECTED state. It may be provided by the AMF and also may be updated by the AMF later.

It includes the forbidden RAT, the forbidden area and the service area restrictions as specified in TS 23.501 [3]. It also includes serving PLMN/SNPN and may include a list of equivalent PLMNs. It may also include PNI-NPN mobility restrictions (i.e. list of CAGs allowed for the UE and whether the UE can also access non-CAG cells). The gNB shall consider that roaming or access to CAG cells is only allowed if PNI-NPN mobility information is available for the UE.

Upon receiving the roaming and access restriction information for a UE, if applicable, the gNB should use it to determine whether to apply restriction handling for subsequent mobility action, e.g., handover, redirection.

If the roaming and access restriction information is not available for a UE at the gNB, the gNB shall consider that there is no restriction for subsequent mobility actions except for the PNI-NPN mobility as described in TS 23.501 [3].

Only if received over NG or Xn signalling, the roaming and access restriction information shall be propagated over Xn by the source gNB during Xn handover. If the Xn handover results in a change of serving PLMN (to an equivalent PLMN), the source gNB shall replace the serving PLMN with the identity of the target PLMN and move the serving PLMN to the equivalent PLMN list, before propagating the roaming and access restriction information.

If NG-RAN nodes with different versions of the XnAP or NGAP protocol are deployed, information provided by the 5GC within the NGAP Mobility Restriction List may be lost in the course of Xn mobility. In order to avoid such loss of information at Xn handover or UE context retrieval due to a source NG-RAN node or an old NG-RAN node not able to recognise the entire content, the source NG-RAN node or the old NG-RAN node may provide an 5GC Mobility Restriction List Container to the target NG-RAN node or the new NG-RAN node, containing the Mobility Restriction List as received from the 5GC. The target NG-RAN node or the new NG-RAN node shall use the information contained in the 5GC Mobility Restriction List Container as the Mobility Restriction List, except for the Serving PLMN and the Equivalent PLMNs, which the NG-RAN node shall use from the XnAP Mobility Restriction List. The 5GC Mobility Restriction List Container may be propagated at future Xn handover and UE context retrieval.