Roaming Revisited: The Challenge of Wireless Broadband

With Wi-Fi and WiMAX usage on the rise, ensuring seamless roaming and a smooth settlement process will be key to customer satisfaction.

Roam If You Want To, But...

According to Paolini, Wi-Fi roaming is not a technology issue, but rather a financial one. “You already have some roaming between cellular and Wi-Fi, so you can imagine the general framework exists,” she said. “You could be using any technology, and eventually we want to move to a situation where operators don’t need to be using the same technology.”

Aptilo is helping T-Mobile in Europe ensure seamless roaming can happen among different countries where T-Mobile offers wireless broadband services. “We asked their view of roaming, and they said they like the idea but just can’t set up bilateral roaming agreements with all the WISPs and broadband operators out there,” Ward said. “They’ll say we’ll set up agreements with a couple of the big ones, but for the smaller ones it’s not really a factor because the number of times a T-Mobile subscriber is going to be on those networks is too little to matter.”

Paolini agreed and said the field is fragmented. “So a bilateral approach to roaming gets very expensive. And even if you have some consolidation, there’s revenue sharing that can make it more expensive overall,” she said.

Third-party clearing and settlement partners have helped take up the slack by providing a means for wireless broadband providers to outsource the task of creating and administering national and even international roaming agreements. Aptilo and Syniverse are joined by other firms, including MACH and WeRoam, which may provide everything from the actual interconnection to data and financial clearing, fraud protection and revenue assurance solutions.

Paolini said these companies serve an important function in streamlining the back-end operations of Wi-Fi roaming, but when it comes right down to it, the ball is really in the operator’s court. “For a lot of operators, they don’t see wireless broadband roaming as priority No. 1, but at the same time, unless you make the service easy to use, people won’t be as interested in paying for it,” she said.

It is likely a new business model will result. “There is going to be a concerted effort, but it starts with the operator. They have to come up with a good model of how to do it, and then the vendors have to be able to help, she said. “This is something we just haven’t seen before, and everyone in the value chain will need to take an active role in this.”

Standards Key to Roaming Success

As wireless broadband use has increased, the need for standards to facilitate the exchange of billing data and roaming also has risen. The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) developed the Wireless Roaming Intermediary Exchange (WRIX) standard to provide an interface for the data and financial clearing necessary for end-to-end settlement between wireless network providers.

WRIX traditionally has been used only by members of the WBA, but that is starting to change as the WBA enters into alliances with other wireless broadband groups. In March, the WBA signed a formal liaison agreement with the Fixed Mobile Convergence Alliance (FMCA) to deliver a better roaming experience to mobile users. The two groups combined boast approximately 40 service provider members, representing more than 800 million customers worldwide.

In April, the WBA joined with the WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance (WiSOA) in order to advance global roaming for WiMAX and interstandard roaming between WiMAX and Wi-Fi.

“We’ve seen steady growth in the number of mobile subscribers that are covered by WRIX, and I think the standard is adding value,” Syniverse’s Wick said. “It’s the beginning of a process that will take many years and hopefully lead to a more ubiquitous solution that interoperates with other network standards for roaming. It’s definitely a start, but I don’t believe it’s the ending.”

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