Syniverse Technologies spent much of 2012 conducting LTE roaming and interconnect trials with seven tier-one wireless operators around the world, and the company said this week that it expects the trials to lead to an increase in LTE roaming this year.
The trials laid the foundation for commercial LTE roaming to become a reality for LTE subscribers, who will increasingly expect the same service experience regardless of where they travel, according to Jeff Gordon, president and CEO of Syniverse.
He said that the end-to-end roaming trials “have been a critical step to ensure mobile service providers have the real-time experience management capabilities necessary to deliver on these expectations by providing a seamless experience to end users as they roam from one LTE network to another in 2013 and beyond.”
The company said that based on analysis of transactions between mobile service providers worldwide, Syniverse saw global mobile data roaming sessions on legacy 2G and 3G networks increase 40% in 2012 compared to 2013, showing that subscribers are consuming data regardless of their network location and signalling the willingness to do the same for LTE – if providers can make it work.
“LTE roaming is vital to keep up with end-user demands for high-speed data access regardless of where they travel; however, there are a myriad of complexities that must be overcome,” said John Wick, SVP of network at Syniverse.
According to Wick, operators who participated in the company’s trials have exchanged SIM cards or entire mobile devices and ensured that testing is conducted end-to-end, from network authentication, to service use, to billing.
“All of these components are necessary to deliver the seamless and ubiquitous LTE experience end users demand,” he added.
Wick said that the company’s trials tested a variety of devices on the networks on global LTE roaming partners using various spectrums – however, he noted that the technical complexities that Syniverse encountered “arose primarily from various support elements, such as the new LTE protocols and configurations.”
Wick told RCR Wireless News that the three key lessons learned from the trials included:
- Ensuring proper signaling is in place. “Several challenging network element re-configurations were required for the home and visited network’s diameter protocols to communicate with each other, but all were ultimately successful. This was achieved through a number of different in-house troubleshooting tools,” Wick said.
- Validating traffic flow. Wick said there were “a number of unique challenges that led to traffic failure during testing among the different roaming partners,” but that Syniverse was able to pinpoint and remedy them despite the fact that they “would have been difficult to detect with standard testing procedures.”
- Complying with new clearing requirements. Wick said that initial LTE call detail record submissions “didn’t include the new information required for LTE clearing and settlement, which would prevent accurate wholesale and retail billing” and that expertise in LTE clearing and settlement was important to resolve that issue.
“The rapidly growing number of LTE networks globally combined with continuous increases in mobile roaming volumes signal heightened demand for LTE roaming,” Gordon said. “We are working to ensure service providers are ready to meet these demands in the near term and well into the future.”
Read more about the developing ecosystem and challenges for LTE devices in this special report from RCR Wireless.
