Roaming will change in 2012

Local roaming (3G to Wi-Fi to 4G) and the significant growth of machine-to-machine (M2M) roaming are two of the changes to the telecom roaming infrastructure Starhome sees among their predictions for 2012.

Starhome, a driving force behind roaming profitability for mobile network operators, predicts the fast-growing technological progress within the industry is creating a new multi-network environment that will change roaming as we know it.

New technologies and usage patterns have skyrocketed in the last few years, causing an unprecedented demand on networks. To accommodate these new demands, mobile network operators are turning their attention and resources to invest in Long Term Evolution (LTE) to cope with the demands of extra bandwidth. The increasing use of smart devices, mobile applications and content, as well as the snowballing development of M2M devices will all influence operators decisions to be a part of the expanding multi-network roaming environment.

Solutions and services will need to be LTE ready to enable subscribers to roam in ‚islands’ of LTE within 3G and WiFi networks. For instance, when a 3G roamer passes through an LTE network, a fall-back procedure for 3G phones is triggered to ensure service is maintained. To support this multi-network mobility, operators will require innovative, intelligent solutions that can dynamically adapt and react to the ever changing environment to raise the revenue bar and maintain subscriber satisfaction.

Shlomo Wolfman, Co-Founder & COO at Starhome explained: ‚Multi-network mobility will open new opportunities and new challenges for industry players. Legacy off-the-shelf products are no longer sufficient to meet the expanding mobile environment and increase operator revenues. Business management tools including decision-making solutions with massive integrated data analytics will become the tool of choice to combine with products already provided to the industry.‚

Multi-network challenges are further complicated by the current industry trends: Regulations, data usage, bill shock and operator’s attempts to instil fearless roaming in their subscribers. Operators will need solutions for multi-networks that will work as they should when they should to gain the competitive edge in this emerging environment.

Starhome offers LTE ready solutions to tackle the new multi-network challenges as well as today’s trends, which will carry-over well into 2012. Our complete solutions enable operators to offer the best data packages, using segmentation for subscribers, as well as full support for wholesale and retail. M2M (Machine-to-Machine) solutions are also available to control embedded mobile devices and machines within the networks.

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