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Getting Data Services Ready To Roam

As they roll out next-generation networks,carriers face the challenge of determining how to offer their customers seamless,nationwide — and perhaps worldwide — data services. The answer lies in cutting deals with other carriers.

by brad smith
January 21, 2002

As wireless carriers around the world launch their next-generation networks, they find themselves in a position similar to the one they were in a decade or two ago: These 2.5G and 3G networks essentially are local or regional in nature, but their customers expect to use them regardless of where they are.

As they did with voice, so carriers must do with the data capabilities enabled by 2.5G and 3G–they will have to establish roaming agreements with other carriers. But roaming agreements for voice seem simple in comparison with the complexities of what is needed for data.

What makes wireless data roaming trickier than voice is the roaming subscriber needs access not only to the visited network but also to individual Internet pages he has set up through his home carrier.

"When you move into data, you have a completely different animal from voice," says Bill Clift, chief technology officer for Cingular Wireless.

The British consultancy Analysys predicted in a recent report that the number of GPRS subscribers worldwide could reach 6 million by the end of 2002. But Analysys has a caveat – that number is obtainable only if the operators establish roaming agreements by the middle of this year.

Katrina Bond, a senior analyst with Analysys, says carriers don't have any choice but to sign these roaming agreements quickly.

"While very little GPRS data revenue will be derived directly from roaming," she says, "it is critical for attracting early adopters, particularly business people whose main reason for wanting GPRS services is to access e-mail and corporate applications when traveling."

What's more, the roaming agreements that carriers are now establishing for GPRS will set the standard for later agreements as networks evolve to EDGE and wide-band-CDMA. Similar challenges lie ahead for CDMA carriers migrating to CDMA2000 1X and 3X technologies because they all use packet-data protocols.

In ISP roaming, subscribers use the visited network
as an Internet service provider to access their services.

Choosing A Roaming Method

Few carriers have established these roaming agreements, Analysys says. Among them is Cingular Wireless, the first U.S. carrier to implement a GPRS roaming agreement. At least one carrier, Germany's Group 3G, has signed a W-CDMA roaming agreement even though it doesn't have its network operating yet. Group 3G is the joint venture between Telefonica Moviles Group and Sonera Corp.

Since the coming networks use Internet protocol, one of the ways to set up roaming between carriers is via the Internet. Roaming subscribers use the visited network as an Internet service provider to access their services.

Another way to establish packet roaming is to use a third party to provide the link over a private IP connection, while at the same time ensuring the quality of service, security and control that carriers expect. This method routes GPRS traffic from the visited network to the home mobile network via the third party.

Some carriers are trying both of these options, but Analysys believes most carriers will favor the third-party method–called GRX for "GPRS roaming exchanges."

As with traditional voice roaming, these GRX can provide clearinghouse services for roaming revenue settlement, signaling interoperability and customer management applications.

Among the carriers who already have chosen the GRX solution are Cingular Wireless and VoiceStream Wireless in the United States; Europolitan, Sonofon, Telia Mobile and Orange in Europe, and Hutchison Telecom in Hong Kong. Analysys says MobilKom Austria and Singtel are testing both models.

Among the early GRX companies are IP backbone providers and roaming brokers. Bond says these companies – such as Telia International Carrier and TSI – also see an opportunity to provide hosting facilities and act as a marketing channel for mobile portals and application service providers.

Another GRX company, Cable & Wireless, also may offer content management services for carriers, Bond says. Cable & Wireless last year purchased the content delivery network Digital Island and has announced plans to buy the data center company Exodus Communications.

Other companies getting into GRX are Energis, France Telecom-owned Equant, Telenor, Comfone, Infonet and Finland's Sonera.

With GPRS roaming exchanges, a third party provides a link
over a private IP connection to route GPRS traffic from the
visited network to the home mobile network.

Cingular Wireless, using TSI as a third-party GRX, implemented intercarrier roaming in December for its GPRS customers in Las Vegas, Spokane and Seattle, Wash., North and South Carolina, coastal Georgia and eastern Tennessee. The roaming agreements allow its GPRS customers to use GPRS networks operated by AT&T Wireless and VoiceStream.

Cingular's Clift says a big advantage that GSM/GPRS has is its global ubiquity. Cingular already has voice roaming agreements with 140 international carriers and will work to extend those to data as well.

"Our first priority was to work on domestic agreements; next is to do that internationally," he says.

Not Business As Usual

How these international agreements will work is still under discussion. One of the options is for the visited network to transport the traveling subscriber back to his or her home network. Another is to establish a virtual home network in the visited network.

The business relationship between the two carriers also is part of a roaming agreement. At what rate per minute, or per kilobyte, will the visited network charge? Is it reciprocal?

Cingular and VoiceStream signed an unusual deal last fall that isn't a roaming agreement but essentially accomplishes the same thing with some added benefits to both. The two carriers agreed to share their GSM network infrastructure in New York, California and Nevada.

What the major carriers do on roaming affects smaller carriers as well, since roaming can have a significant financial impact on the smaller carriers. They could lose potential revenue if they don't upgrade their networks to 2.5G or 3G or, in the case of TDMA networks, switch air interface technologies.

As with voice roaming, many subscribers will pay roaming charges for data to cover the fees a carrier incurs. Those charges will depend on the kind of plans the subscriber has, just as with voice, according to Ritch Blasi, spokesman for AT&T Wireless. The increasing complexity of AT&T's network is going to make subscriber plans more complex, too.

The ideal situation from AT&T's point of view is to build out its network of 2.5G or 3G capabilities to the point where it doesn't have to pay roaming fees to another carrier, Blasi says. Another option is to acquire a smaller carrier with which it has a roaming agreement, as AT&T did with its proposed acquisition of TeleCorp PCS.

It was AT&T's proposed TeleCorp acquisition that influenced NTT DoCoMo's decision in December to buy additional AT&T stock. DoCoMo has been taking stakes in a number of wireless carriers to ensure that its 3G services are interoperable around the globe. When AT&T Wireless said it would use stock to buy TeleCorp, DoCoMo said it would increase its investment to maintain its 16 percent stake.

The push to get these roaming agreements in place quickly is coming from the carriers' business customers, typically the ones who do the most traveling. Because of this, Cingular's Clift believes 3G roaming agreements will develop quickly during the next two years.

"Your business customers will want ubiquitous access to their data and back-office applications," he says. "I can't speak for the industry, but as a technologist I believe that Cingular certainly sees the value to interconnect with other carriers." [WIM]