Eighteen months after being blown off course in the stormy seas of the cellular industry, the MobiLink alliance has taken a new bearing as a developer of advanced roaming services.
MobiLink was formed by 15 B-block cellular carriers in 1993 to help build a common national brand identity and service standard against the A-block Cellular One brand alliance.
A series of industry consolidations the following year involving MobiLink members-Bell Atlantic Corp., Nynex Corp., AirTouch Communications Inc. and U S West Inc.-made the branding mission largely redundant, and these leading carriers withdrew from the partnership.
“When we started we had a heavy brand orientation, but with the creation of other cellular alliances, carriers wanted to pursue their own branding,” noted Tim McChesney, MobiLink’s president and chief executive officer.
McChesney took the helm in September 1994 to steer the partnership in a new direction toward developing services that improve customers’ roaming experience.
“No matter what the alliances are, none of them are truly ubiquitous. There is a need for an organization like MobiLink to make the promise of wireless-anytime, anywhere communications-a reality,” he said.
MobiLink tries to do that today as an independent third-party services developer and strategic partner to the carriers.
“With the multiplicity of carrier agendas, progress [toward implementing advanced services] would be measured in years rather than months. We need to have a dedicated focus to come up with solutions,” he said.
Thus far, MobiLink has introduced a suite of services under the Virtual National Network service mark. Services for roamers include pre-call validation and automatic call delivery, standardized dialing patterns, feature portability, an international 800 number, standardized recorded announcement, a credit-card service option for denied customers and a common circuit switched cellular data standard.
McChesney believes MobiLink’s most noteworthy service development is the new Home Customer Care feature.
HCC allows roaming customers to connect to their home carrier for swift trouble-shooting and problem resolution when traveling in a participating carrier’s market. The feature is accessed using a common customer service number.
McChesney notes that HCC also provides a platform for reinstating roamers who are wrongly denied access due to overzealous fraud countermeasures.
“For the carrier we provide revenue enhancement and expense reduction as well as help increase customer loyalty,” McChesney said.
MobiLink currently has 29 participating carriers in North America. Eleven have ownership stakes in the partnership and 18 others have agreed to implement MobiLink’s services in their markets. McChesney also noted that some MobiLink services are available on a pick-and-choose subscription basis.
