Wi-Fi roaming is garnering more attention this week as more companies announce settlement solutions in the space and a new report points to the importance of hot spot roaming.
Interoute said it launched a European roaming exchange service for 802.11 wireless and mobile service providers.
The Interoute roaming exchange allows providers to increase the number of wireless locations that subscribers can use to gain access to their networks. Interoute’s offering includes embedded authentication, billing and settlement facilities.
“Interoute has good experience in this important market, and we understand that helping to promote roaming and service interworking is imperative if the wireless market is to take off,” said James Kinsella, executive chairman of the company. “With our excellent reach, density, understanding and non-competing business model, Interoute is ideally placed to help drive market adoption and growth.”
Interoute also provides managed services to hot-spot providers, including digital subscriber line and Internet access, managed customer premises equipment and managed back-office services.
In related news, Nomadix Inc. and ipUnplugged AB announced they launched complete interoperability between their solutions for carriers to enable secure seamless roaming across Wi-Fi, GPRS, UMTS or CDMA networks while maintaining a single billing solution.
In addition, a new report from U.K. consultancy BWCS and Swedish venture capital group BrainHeart Capital said commercial roaming agreements are vital to the future of the fragmented hot-spot market. The report found that only 12 of the 26 largest hot-spot operators worldwide have any roaming agreements in place and of those that do, none can be classified as true commercial roaming.
“Among the [wireless Internet service providers] that operate roaming agreements, many are simply bilateral free agreements that involve no clearing or settlement of service fees,” said Peter Kingsland, BWCS consultant. “This can only ever be a stop-gap solution as without a full multilateral roaming platform in place, WISPs risk losing up to 30 percent of potential hot-spot revenues. Unlike the cellular industry, national roaming will be just as important as international roaming to hot-spot operators.”
RCR Wireless News also reported this week that Tatara Systems Inc. launched a platform providing “service-enabled roaming solutions” for Wi-Fi networks.
