WBA CEO: ‘As operators and enterprises adopt OpenWiFi, they will need OpenRoaming’
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has adopted the OpenRoaming standard for its OpenWiFi initiative, which launches officially on May 12. OpenRoaming, developed by Cisco and now controlled by WBA, allows seamless Wi-Fi onboarding from location to location without the need for logins or passwords, while OpenWiFi, leverages open-source development and automated testing to allow Wi-Fi service providers to deploy access points, cloud controllers and smart analytics from different vendors.
RCR Wireless News spoke with Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance and Chris Busch, co-chair of the TIP Open Converged Wireless group, to find out more about what the combination of these two initiatives means for the future of Wi-Fi around the world.
Busch explained that the idea behind OpenWiFi is to “unlock premium Wi-Fi features” without vendor lock in. “Operators are resonating really well with choice of platform and choice of cloud. The next obvious step was having a seamless onboarding experience on top of that choice,” he said.
By combining OpenWiFi with OpenRoaming, he added, the “two worlds come together” to both give freedom of choice in the disaggregated technology stack and enable network providers to work seamlessly within an open roaming context across a range of consumer electronic devices.
Rodrigues went as far as to state that as operators and enterprises adopt OpenWiFi, they will “need” OpenRoaming, arguing, “It’s a feature that must be there.”
The OpenRoaming standard allows a user to join any network managed by any provider within the established trusted federation of providers. The network is then able to automatically authenticate devices by using established identity providers, such as a service provider, device manufacturer, cloud ID or even loyalty memberships.
Further, OpenRoaming adheres to Passpoint and Wireless Roaming Intermediary Exchange (WRIX) standards, helping bridge the gap between Wi-Fi and cellular networks by making it easy and safe for users to roam between Wi-Fi networks without having to deal with prompts to sign-in.
In a statement, Rodrigues also called WBA OpenRoaming “strong complement” to OpenWiFi” because both “are designed to remove barriers to connectivity.”
“The WBA and TIP are both envisioning a world, hopefully not too far away, where digital connectivity becomes simpler and more streamlined for the entire ecosystem of communications service providers, OEMs, enterprises and consumers,” he said.
