North American GSM operators finally are presenting a united front to the rest of the world when it comes to roaming into the United States and Canada.
European and other GSM international operators, anxious to offer their customers roaming in North America, have been frustrated in recent years over U.S. and Canadian operators’ lack of initiative in securing roaming agreements as well as the complex methods by which they had to negotiate such agreements.
North American GSM operators had been busy building out their footprints and weren’t ready to focus on international roaming. That changed last spring when the North American GSM Alliance made a collective effort to promote roaming in North America.
“We were all across the board as North American operators,” said Bob Brown, secretary/treasurer of the GSM Alliance. “Omnipoint and Microcell had the most international roaming launches effective as of last spring. The rest had quite a bit fewer, and we decided to become very aggressive.”
By the time the GSM Association annual plenary meeting rolled around last October, North America’s seven largest operators had secured a minimum of 50 international roaming agreements. By 1 January, each launched roaming with 25 more international carriers and each expect to have a minimum of 125 launches by April.
In addition, the major GSM Alliance members have agreed to offer a common, more simplified interoperator tariff that will allow international GSM operators to offer consistent rates to their customers when they are roaming on GSM networks in North America. The major components include a small number of rate bands, the elimination of confusing local calling areas within North America and large decreases in charges for calls by most of the operators to destinations with the highest international toll traffic. North American GSM carriers have begun offering the new tariffs this quarter.
“International operators would have had to negotiate 20 different deals and rates,” said Brown. “That’s terribly complicated. We developed a consistent process so all agreements are coordinated by Microcell, and there’s a consistent wholesale pricing strategy.”
The GSM Alliance also has created a 16-page brochure fashioned after a passport that explains how to roam in North America and where the coverage areas are. In addition, New York operator Omnipoint has engineered a three-minute in-flight video feature story explaining GSM global roaming. The segment appears on all inbound and outbound flights on United Airlines, TWA, Northwest and U S Airways.
These aggressive efforts have begun to pay off for some unlikely GSM players in the United States. BellSouth Mobility DCS, which operates in some nontraditional international roaming markets like the United States’ Charlotte, North Carolina, and Knoxville, Tennessee, reported that its roaming revenue doubled in the fourth quarter.
“We have current agreements in places like Bahrain and Macao,” said Michelle Cabnet, roaming manager with BellSouth Mobility DCS. “Research Triangle (North Carolina) and international airports are bringing in the business. We are doing very well for where we are.”
