While a significant part of the future success of WiMAX will be dependent on successful roaming, its implementation is complex and challenging to achieve. Bram Jan Streefland, co-founder and managing director of Trustive, Europe's largest wireless hotspot provider explores what it will mean to the industry if we get this wrong, highlights how the industry must learn from the initial mistakes made by WiFi, and proposes that the role of the wireless IP clearinghouse will be fundamental to its success.

Roaming is central to the success of WiMAX; this is a market that may reach as much as $1.6 billion by 2009 according to Infonetics. Indeed, GSM only became a real success once roaming had taken off. The first GSM roaming agreement was established back in 1993, and now there are over 2,000,000,000 connections per month.

From an end user's point of view, WiMAX roaming will be expected as the norm. Trustive's recent WLAN Roaming 2007 research found the most important thing for end users when purchasing subscriptions for wireless hotspot access was coverage. The report also showed this coverage has to be truly ubiquitous - 33 per cent use hotspots all over the world, 37 per cent nationally, and 30 per cent close to home.

Demand is growing. To date WiFi services have been mainly used for business purposes, now consumer demand is taking off. Additionally, access to WiMAX is set to become far easier with the impending arrival of in-built chips, such as Intel's forthcoming Echo Peak chip, alongside regular WiFi chips in notebooks computers and mobile Internet devices. WiMAX chips are expected to be available towards the end of next year, which is also about the time that new WiMAX networks around the world will be going live.

From the operator perspective WiMAX roaming must be offered, not only to serve customer needs, but to earn associated revenues; mobile operators generate over $60bn in revenues from roaming annually which constitutes 20% of their profits. With threats to these revenues coming from impending regulation from the European Union and new technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) the ability to bring in new revenue streams is essential.

Roaming is key to growth. It assists operators to extend coverage, as it enables subscribers to access and utilise foreign networks and create a seamless user experience. Roaming also helps operators increase traffic by allowing them to earn incremental revenue from visiting subscribers. It also facilitates one-bill subscriptions.

However, implementing roaming is not easy. It means negotiating multiple complex contracts with a variety of providers, network integration, accurate billing, settlement and service provision, high levels of process efficiency and revenue management to ensure minimum losses due to bad debt and fraud.

It is essential we, as an industry, get WiMAX roaming right; first time. We have already seen what will happen if we do not. While WiFi roaming is working well now, the early WiFi hotspot model suffered from a lack of interoperability between hotspots and the subsequent inability of the WiFi world to provide consistent service. It taught a clear lesson that if you lose the customer the first time because they cannot connect anywhere, it is more difficult to get them a second time. That is the mistake that WiMAX must not make.

We are lucky with WiMAX. We should have gained many valuable learnings already from the implementation of other mobile technologies and in particular WiFi roaming - as it is based on IP sessions using RADIUS for Authentication, Authorisation and Access with many similarities. We should also have understood by now what the customer wants and how to deliver it.

This also means that WiMAX implementations should achieve a quicker return on investment (ROI) and go to market. WiMAX will be able to interconnect with today's existing global WiFi hotspot networks, meaning players can 'go global' from day one. Additionally, we have already achieved a level of end-user acceptance and awareness of hotspot services through the roll-out of WiFi services. All this puts WiMAX in a great position for the future, if we can just get the roaming element right.

So where are we with roaming today?

Trustive's research showed that WLAN roaming market is continuing to grow at a significant rate as subscriber owners look to extend their hotspot footprint - more devices are being used and the number of hotspots keeps growing. Sixty six per cent of service providers have roaming agreements with international operators, up from 42 per cent in 2006. This averages out to about 4.2 per operator in 2007, compared to 3.4 per operator in 2006. At a local level, the findings showed the average number of roaming agreements with local operators has also increased over the last 12 months. In 2007, 51 per cent of service providers had local roaming agreements, an increase of 11 per cent on last year. This equates to 3.4 per operator, up from 2.3 per operator in 2006. While these findings are mainly focused on WiFi offerings, it bodes well for the future of WiMAX.

Additionally, 82 per cent of hotspot operators have at least one roaming agreement with a hotspot access provider or aggregator. This last is an important fact.

Wireless IP clearinghouses, like Trustive, take care of all billing, clearing and settlement processes, thereby allowing partners to focus on managing their customer relationships. This is traditionally a tricky area for subscriber owners and one that is essential to get right in order to protect margins. It also means that every month, the clearinghouse settles the accounts with all the network providers that are involved in the service. As a result, the wholesale providers can deal with just one point of contact and one invoice, rather than having to settle separately with all those parties involved.

Indeed, a recent article from Frank Ohrtman on WiMAX.com predicted such a play which would enable operators to buy into a roaming agreement for 3.65 GHz WiMAX. It certainly sounds like his wish was Trustive's command...

It was because of the role as a global hotspot operator providing WiFi clearing to the likes of Telefonica, Vodafone and over 70 other hotspot operators that the WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance (WiSOA) selected Trustive as the IP partner to provide a turn-key solution to allow WiMAX users to roam to other networks. The key objective of WiSOA is to accelerate the acceptance and deployment of interoperable WiMAX networks through a coordinated global effort. The partnership was part of the world's first roaming agreement to provide seamless 'GSM-like' roaming amongst WiMAX networks and with global WiFi networks.

Trustive will provide services for unified clearance, billing and interconnection. These services will provide roaming amongst WiMAX networks, as well as interconnection with the Trustive Network, an aggregated global WiFi network of over 30,000 hotspots, creating one global wireless IP clearing and roaming platform. It will also instigate the first step in the implementation of roaming between WiMAX networks and hundreds of GSM and 3G roaming partners.

Another key role wireless IP clearinghouses are playing is to push operators to follow specifications that will facilitate and accelerate roaming agreements. One example of this is the WISPr (Wireless Internet Service Provider roaming) specification that will make it easier for operators to establish roaming agreements with one another and aims to facilitate simple, one-click access (smart client) to wireless networks. Adherence to the specification obviously makes it easier for clearinghouses to integrate partner networks into the virtual network they are creating through roaming agreements.

In short, successful roaming is central to the future success of WiMAX. We must get the implementation right, and we must do so first time. Wireless IP Clearinghouses will play a key part in this by using their learnings to date and the practices developed from the WiFi experience.


About Trustive

Trustive is Europe's leading wireless hotspot access provider and one of the fastest growing in the world. Through roaming agreements, Trustive is meeting the end-user demand for access to a global network of hotspots by offering a unified service through an easy-to-use user interface, providing the end-user with one single login and invoice. The Trustive network already covers most major European airports and many other prime locations and includes over 30,000 hotspots across 70 different network providers including Telefonica, SFR, Vodafone Italy, Vodafone Netherlands, Proximus and others. Development of this footprint has given Trustive significant experience in integrating WiFi services into a roaming network.

Link for Trustive website: www.trustive.com

Link to Trustive research: http://corporate.trustive.com

Link to WiSOA site: www.wisoa.net