About WiMAX Roaming

What is WiMAX Roaming?
The WiMAX Roaming White Paper provides an overview of business models and technical aspects of roaming. Roaming enables customers to automatically access their wireless services when travelling outside the geographical coverage area of their home network. This includes internet, e-mail, voice, video and other services available on the home network. Roaming provides the ability for you to access your wireless services by using the network of an operator that is not your home network operator. This is made possible by your home network operator agreeing with other operators to allow you to use your wireless services on their networks.

Benefits of WiMAX Roaming
Roaming provides significant advantages to customers and network operators. Roaming can dramatically expand the coverage area available to customers and can enable an operator to expand its footprint.

Types of Roaming
Roaming can either be national or international. National Roaming occurs when the visited network is in the same country as the home network. International or Global Roaming occurs when the visited network is in a different country than the home network. Roaming can also occur between networks using differing technologies, such as WiMAX and Wi-Fi or WiMAX and 3G. This is known as Inter-standard roaming.

Connecting Operator Networks for Roaming For roaming to occur, the networks of two operators must be connected to provide access to services and to enable the process of sharing usage information and to facilitate billing and financial settlement between operators. This can be achieved by operators establishing direct connections between their networks or by connecting their networks through a third party roaming exchange provider (WRX). One advantage of connecting through a third party provider is that this can enable an operator to connect with many other operators through a single connection. This can allow an operator to expand its footprint quickly.

Roaming Agreements
Roaming agreements set forth the terms and conditions by which operators agree to provide each other’s subscribers with access to their networks. An agreement details which services are to be provided and the rates that the operators will pay for using the other’s network. The agreement also includes information relating to QoS, customer care and billing and financial settlement.