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.

WiMAX on the Rise

While Wi-Fi may be getting most of the spotlight when it comes to wireless broadband technologies, WiMAX promises to make a big splash in the wireless pool very soon, as evidenced by Xohm — a joint venture between Sprint and Clearwire Corp. The two companies are in the process of combining their WiMAX operations and deploying it across the United States.

Reaching greater distances than Wi-Fi — several miles compared to a few dozen meters — WiMAX soon will be more widespread, especially as laptops begin to support the standard as much as they support Wi-Fi today.

That it’s an overlay to the existing cellular infrastructure should help WiMAX work more harmoniously with the world’s current telecom standards, Wick said. “WiMAX will take longer than Wi-Fi to become ubiquitously available, but roaming will be much easier since it more closely mimics the footprint of the traditional cell network,” he said.

Ward agreed. He added that in the beginning WiMAX will be similar to cellular voice, but he cautions that there will be unique challenges for the technology. “With traditional voice, the operator still largely controls the devices that can work on its network; with WiMAX, you’ll soon have support straight in your laptop allowing anyone to connect from a variety of devices.”

Because service providers no longer will be synonymous with network owners, creating new partner business models will be key to supporting the settlement process, said Seth Nesbitt, vice president of product and solutions marketing at Amdocs. “In order to support multipartner settlement processes, where a single event is settled by several and different types of partners working under various types of partnership models, WiMAX service providers will have to implement a single, flexible partner management and settlement solution that can support all partnerships and the associated business, financial and technical complexities.”

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