Ready to Roam?

Two service providers reveal their testing processes for global roaming.

Have you ever noticed how professionals make the game or business look easy? For instance, in 1996, Haile Gebreselassie, a lean and little-known Ethiopian athlete, ran 10,000 meters and emerged glistening and smiling at the finish line to collect his first Olympic gold medal. A young computer enthusiast by the name of Bill Gates seemed to come from nowhere to start and run a multibillion-dollar enterprise. A relatively small wireless provider such as Powertel, previously limited to offering national service, extended its service to 50 countries.

To some onlookers, accomplishments like these appear to happen overnight. But behind the scenes, the pros have sweated, planned and prepared, for years in some cases. Here's how two wireless-service providers planned and prepared to offer international roaming to their customers.

A Team Effort
In April 1999, Powertel, a North American GSM operator, had the ability to roam with one service provider outside the United States.

"Because we only had one carrier, we didn't start advertising (international roaming) until the summer," explained David Clay, Powertel director of roaming. In August 1999, the company announced the availability of international roaming to its customers. Today, Powertel's customers can roam with 150 service providers around the world.

The company was able to expedite the first two phases in the planning process because of its membership and connections in the GSM North American Alliance. As a member of the alliance, Powertel also belonged to a team of 350 GSM operators worldwide. Members of the alliance agree to roam with each other, and the alliance uses a standard roaming agreement that can be amended to suit individual service providers' needs.

Powertel also relied on its relationship with fellow North American GSM provider Omnipoint to gain quick access to contacts abroad. So getting agreements signed turned out to be the easy part.

"We had roughly 50 agreements in place by Jan. 1, 1999," Clay said.

But the technical aspects of the partnerships took longer to work out. After signing the agreements, the company ran tests and trials with each partner. Testing took about a month to six weeks for each partner.

The Powertel employees who ran the tests belong to the GSM Alliance's International Roaming Expert Group (IREG). Though not engineers by degree, they serve in an engineering capacity, testing switches and loading numbers, among other duties. Powertel has designated two employees to exclusively perform IREG duties.

One of the most trying aspects of these workers' jobs involves running trials with partners that operate in vastly different time zones. The IREG workers run trials during off-peak hours, which can mean working unusual shifts.

Tests and adjustments to get the partners' switches properly communicating with one another usually take at least two weeks. The testing process includes setting up a connection between the roaming partner and Teleglobe, Powertel's interconnect company in Canada, to ensure calls from the partner's customers can be routed from North America to other parts of the world.

The IREG workers also test the subscriber identification module cards of roaming partners. Powertel requires an exchange of 15 cards with each partner. Powertel and its partners load information from the cards into one another's switches to verify that the cards will operate correctly.

Then come the physical trials, which can take one to two hours.

"We sit here in our corporate office in West Point and have a landline or at least a secondary connection with the other carrier," Clay said. "We'll have each other's mobile numbers loaded into our switches and verify that our numbers work on their switches and vice versa."

During the trials, Powertel employees run about 20 call scenarios to determine whether various features will function properly while roaming with the partner. The scenarios include voice-to-voice calls, call forwarding, linking to a voice-mail system and using a short-message service.

"About half (the scenarios) will work on the first try," Clay said.

Problems must be resolved before proceeding to other stages of the testing process. It can take days or weeks to fix problems that surface during trials.

After conducting trials and fixing any problems, a billing record is sent to Powertel's billing office in Atlanta. From there, the call-detail records (CDRs) go to a clearinghouse in Alabama. The clearinghouse sends each file to the appropriate partner.

"The process of delivering files is pretty standard and very reliable," Clay said. "The main thing we're validating is that the calls the IREG group made are billed properly in our system."

Proper billing means having a correct log of a call's duration and a record for all calls.

"The biggest challenge is verifying that we get all of the information," Clay said.

A related issue, the timely exchange of records, applies once roaming has begun with a partner. Powertel transmits files to its roaming partners every 24 hours. Clay contrasts this practice with those within an AMPS roaming environment, where he said files are often transferred once a week or less.

Risks & Rewards
Bill Thompson agrees that timeliness in sending records and settling bills with partners is an essential and sometimes challenging aspect of working with roaming partners. As director of sales for BellSouth International Wireless Services, he works with the company's roaming partners in Latin America, which is AMPS territory.

Some small service providers with few roamers hold records because there are so few to transmit, Thompson said. But BellSouth likes to receive records more frequently than once a month, although transmitting records once a month is considered acceptable.

Unlike European GSM operators, Latin American service providers often lack exposure to the concept of international roaming, which means one of Thompson's biggest challenges is to help them understand the value of international roaming. He values the GSM sector's international roaming revenues at $500 million to $600 million a month. Despite the impressive figure, he said, "The biggest difficulty is convincing them that there's that much opportunity in it."

Thompson and his sales staff have succeeded in convincing about 36 independent service providers throughout Latin America to roam with BellSouth. These service providers joined a network of 10 BellSouth subsidiaries that operate in Latin America and partners such as Milicom International Cellular, a service provider with six wireless properties in Latin America.

"There was very little true roaming in Latin America prior to this," Thompson recalled. "It only really took place in the South cone area, particularly Argentina, Uruguay and Chile."

In addition to gathering roaming partners, BellSouth invested in the wireless infrastructure in Latin America and in a spectrum license in Brazil.

"We paid, along with our partner in Brazil, $2.4 billion for a license for Sao Paulo City, as well as part of the northeastern region of Brazil," Thompson said. "It was considered a huge gamble. Yet today we have in excess of a million, perhaps close to two million customers, and that's after only about a year of operation."

However, Thompson admits few companies would take the financial risks, considering the time involved to build networks.

"Certainly in order to become a real player in Latin America, one has to have very deep pockets and a tremendous commitment and willingness to take risks," he said. "Look at the currency fluctuations that have occurred in Brazil, for instance, during this past year. You've got to be prepared for that. We accepted the risks. That's part of the game."

But obviously the company would not take such risks without hope of a huge payoff. Thompson said he thinks the payoff will come.

"Out of Miami alone there are 350 flights a day in and out of Latin America," he said. "The potential demand can be seen by anyone taking a cursory review of the business travelers who are getting on these airplanes every day to go to South American locations. Add to that the foreign airlines that are serving the major hubs in Latin America, and you have a lot of people who are looking for wireless services."

He sees the future of wireless in Latin America as dependent on GSM providers building networks in a predominantly AMPS environment. But he admits the venture will take time.

"I don't see a lot of new 3G talk in the Americas. I hear a lot of talk of potential licenses for PCS and GSM. But these networks take a lot of time to build out," Thompson said.

Preparing to Roam
Because BellSouth's Latin American partners operate in an AMPS environment, the testing and trial procedures differ from those used by Powertel. The first step for BellSouth is to conduct an engineering survey, which involves testing the partner's switches and signals and determining the extent of the coverage area. Next, technicians load telephone numbers, which is a manual process in the AMPS world.

BellSouth then sends requests for information to the service providers involved in the test. The information is used to load the partners' line ranges into the network. According to Thompson, technicians usually finish loading the line ranges about 60 days after the requests are sent. The partners' information must be loaded into thousands of switches, and individual cell sites must be tested.

After loading the switches, technicians spot test a dozen or so switches in the most crucial markets. Testing all of the switches would be too time-consuming. So some problems are not detected until the system is up and running, and a roamer complains.

"If we find that a roamer can't roam, we check to see what the problem is with the local carrier," Thompson said. "If a line range is missing, we have them input it. This can be done in a matter of minutes."

In addition to loading and testing switches, BellSouth ensures partners are capable of transferring CDRs to BellSouth. The company's reps also work with partners' management, legal departments, information-technology departments and marketing departments to be sure a procedure is in place to cover every aspect of the billing and settlement process. Preparing the billing system typically takes 90 days to a year to complete, according to Thompson.

Once roaming begins, BellSouth's clearinghouse handles the exchange of CDRs between partners. But that's not the end of the work necessary to sustain lucrative roaming partnerships in Latin America.

"As roaming is now available to these properties, quite often they are a bit hesitant to use it," said Thompson. "We have to stimulate the usage."

BellSouth stimulates usage by offering service in Latin America to European GSM users. When visiting Latin America, the European customers can use CDMA or TDMA phones to receive calls that are placed to their wireless-phone numbers.

Like Powertel, BellSouth has found partners, a style and a pace that suits its customers' international roaming needs. But other options also exist. Service providers can choose to join an alliance, for example, or negotiate bilateral agreements. They can outsource billing and settlement functions or perform the duties internally.

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Types of Roaming Agreements

Direct. An operator establishes a separate roaming agreement with each operator with which it wants to roam.

Piggyback. An operator signs a roaming agreement with a sponsor operator. This agreement provides roaming not only with the sponsor operator but also with the sponsor's roaming partners. Using this method, the operator can expedite gaining access to multiple markets.

Consolidator. A master roaming agreement is established by a single entity, and several operators sign the master agreement with a single set of terms, conditions and rates. The operator can roam with all other operators who have signed the master agreement.

Alliance (Consortium). An intermediary entity manages and facilitates the signing of multiple roaming agreements. The operator joins the alliance, and individual roaming agreements are established between the operator and each of the other members of the consortium. The roaming agreements may follow the standard terms, conditions and rates of the alliance, or the operator may specify individual terms, conditions and rates with individual members of the alliance.

Roamer Broker. The GSM Association has established a subcommittee to better define this option. Preliminary discussion indicates the need for a facilitator or principal to act as the single roaming partner for multiple operators. This model would eliminate the need for multiple bilateral roaming agreements.

Excerpted from the GTE Telecommunication Services Incorporated International Roaming Guide, copyright 2000. Not for reprint without permission from GTE TSI.

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Getting Ready to Roam

Dave Estes, GTE TSI group product manager-clearing, offers these considerations for planning and preparing to roam in the international arena.

Analyze your company's needs with questions such as:
• Would the roaming customers predominantly be large corporations, small businesses or individuals?

• What are your customers' travel patterns?

• Will you need to roam with competitors or sign agreements with providers that use different air-interface technologies to do business in the desired coverage area?

When identifying and selecting potential partners:
• Examine your company's existing strategic partnerships or industry alliances and determine whether these ties may be a source of roaming partners.

• Determine what type of agreement your company wants to enter. Two agreement types are the direct agreement between two operators and the alliance agreement, which enables simultaneous agreements to be established between members of an alliance or consortium. Other options also exist. Keep in mind that negotiating one roaming agreement can take months.

• Determine whether the potential partner operates within a compatible network. What features would be available to roamers? Which fraud-prevention measures would be used?

When negotiating with potential partners:
• Consider the currency in which they want to exchange billing records. Two primary billing systems exist. Each supports a variety of currencies. If the potential partner uses a different billing system, arrangements must be made to convert billing records to the system your company uses.

• Identify interstandard roaming solutions, if the potential partner uses a different air-interface technology.

• Determine how often bills will be settled each month.

• Consider roaming rates for airtime, long distance and special services and features.