Roaming's Evolution

The roaming world has evolved from simple to a complex web of operational needs.

Life in the roaming department used to be simple, said Kim Whaley, Alltel staff manager of wholesale pricing and roaming. When he started at Alltel eight years ago, wireless carriers primarily catered to a small niche of business people and well-to-do consumers. Back then, the roaming department had few partners to manage. Only two carriers existed in most markets, and relatively few subscribers used the networks.

Those days are over. Roaming departments now face constant technological, business and regulatory changes, as well as the headaches that come with negotiating with many roaming partners.

Whaley's staff of approximately 25, for example, handles 200 roaming-partner relationships. He estimates the department spends about 60% of its time on administrative activities, which includes ensuring the proper loading of subscriber data into Alltel's switches and those of its roaming partners.

The other 40% of the department's time is spent on strategy, determining how to improve relationships with roaming partners.

“Keeping pace with change is probably the most difficult thing to do,” Whaley said. “What I install today is probably outdated tomorrow.”

In addition, Alltel's roaming staff has an ongoing struggle to coordinate ANSI-41 record exchanges with roaming partners. The goal is to get carriers' switches properly communicating with each other, so roaming subscribers can be identified, given the same services in roaming markets that they receive at home and be billed correctly and on time.

“ANSI-41 requires a massive change in the way each carrier does business and in how they communicate with each other,” Whaley said. “The coordination between carriers is just a daunting task.”

Complicating the task is the diversity of vendors' switch and network types. One carrier might have a Motorola switch, and one of its roaming partners might have a Lucent switch. Or, a roamer might have digital service in his home market and roam onto an analog network.

Like Whaley, Brian McMahon, U.S. Cellular director of intercarrier services, cited technical differences between networks as a big obstacle.

U.S. Cellular uses both CDMA and TDMA air interfaces. McMahon said ensuring the appropriate programming of preferred roaming lists (PRLs) into CDMA phones and of intercarrier roaming databases (IRDBs) into TDMA phones present an ongoing problem. PRLs and IRDBs change as roaming relationships change.

The WNP Factor

Wireless number portability (WNP) also is creating more work for roaming departments.

“WNP is very critical because of the mandated time frames we have on that,” Whaley said. “When those top 100 markets are mandated, it's going to change the way we do business.”

Preparing for WNP means working with roaming partners to exchange billing and profile information for affected subscribers and to ensure that networks are synchronized to pass a slew of identifiers between carriers.

“Those are very, very big tasks,” Whaley said. “And we've got a bunch of people working on that right now.”

U.S. Cellular's McMahon concurs.

“It's a challenge to meet the testing criteria that our roaming partners would like to set up with us, sometimes a year in advance of the mandate,” he said.

At the same time, there's a question of whether the FCC will stick with the mandated timelines for WNP.

“There's a lot of effort that goes into preparing, planning and implementing,” McMahon said. “Then if we get a response back from the FCC or another regulatory division (postponing the mandate), it becomes frustrating.”

For the Love of the Game

McMahon's been with U.S. Cellular for five years and in the wireless industry for 16 years, 13 as a roaming department head.

“I remember the days when we were exchanging roamer billings in paper format,” McMahon said.

McMahon oversees a 12-person department, which manages relationships with 115 roaming partners. He said the workload is heavy now because the current economic situation has left the department understaffed by about seven employees.

On a typical day, McMahon and his team work with roaming partners to resolve technical and business issues and to make sure that roamers are getting services comparable to those in their home markets.

Unfortunately, without the ability to monitor subscribers when they're roaming on other networks, the department has to “shoot in the dark” to fix problems.

For this reason, U.S. Cellular decided to deploy TSI's Visibility Services software, which enables employees to go online, determine roamers' whereabouts and diagnose problems in real time.

“This tool doesn't come without a hefty price tag,” McMahon said. “But we feel that it's imperative that we have it, so we can extend our reach to our customers, even when they're outside of our network.”

Roaming departments' connections to customer billing are an important part of that extended reach.

Accusations & Explanations

A recent USA Today article reported that minutes sometimes are deducted from monthly calling plans for roaming calls made months prior to the billing date. The article attributed the problem to delays in record exchanges between roaming partners.

“I know that's being addressed within our customer-service organization,” McMahon said. He declined to comment further on the internal investigation, but he had plenty to say about the possible causes of roaming-bill delays.

McMahon said the industry began with a 45-day lead-time to transfer roaming records between carriers, then moved to a 30-day lead-time. Now, the industry is seeking a way to reduce that to 15 days, he said, adding that even 15 days might not be sufficient to end delays.

“What would be more appropriate is to have a clearinghouse that could receive a call record within an hour or so of the call being generated, clear that message, and then electronically distribute it to the home carrier. Three to four hours after the call is placed, that call record (would be) sitting with the home carrier's billing system,” McMahon said. “That's a potentially expensive solution, but we as an industry have to look at it to determine if it's something we need to do for our customers.”

Jon Lightle, Sprint PCS vice president of intercarrier services, said his company doesn't have a problem with roaming-bill delays and that most major carriers clear records daily. He acknowledged that receiving roaming records in real time might be valuable.

“That would be a fabulous solution, if we could get there,” Lightle said. “Quite frankly, as carriers go to more bundled packages that include roaming, (real-time record transmission) becomes a very desirable place for the industry to be.”

Kevin Pazaski, Western Wireless senior manager of roaming and message-processing systems, said real-time transmission of roaming records is a possibility.

“You're definitely going to see an opportunity for calls placed from a roaming partner's switch to show up in the hands of a roaming partner within 24 hours,” Pazaski said.

The International Connection

Sprint PCS's intercarrier-services department, which typically consists of 20 to 30 staff members, faces the daily difficulties of managing 175 roaming-partner relationships (which includes a handful of vendors) and dealing with interoperability and WNP issues. Now there's an added wrinkle.

“The most challenging part of our job now is in the international-roaming implementation arena,” Lightle said. “You have language barriers, cultural barriers, work-ethic barriers and time differences.”

Some of the international carriers Sprint PCS works with are in time zones 12 hours different from that of Sprint PCS's Kansas headquarters. This complicates matters, because Sprint PCS's intercarrier-services operations aren't available around the clock, with the exception of trouble-resolution teams.

Sprint PCS works with carriers in Latin America, South America and the Asia Pacific. This summer, the carrier opened an Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong.

“We're putting a lot of focus on expanding our international footprint,” Lightle said.

Interoperability issues often impede subscribers' international access to some of their home-market services. Lightle said the company wants its subscribers to have access to features such as voice mail, caller ID and 3-way calling while roaming internationally, but, other than voice mail in some cases, these features typically are unavailable.

Shifting Priorities

Similar to Sprint PCS, Western Wireless' roaming department recently has changed its focus.

Several months ago, Western Wireless began converting to an Amdocs billing system. Previously, the carrier received outsourced billing services from ITDS, which was acquired by Amdocs in late 1999.

“Our shift has changed a lot in the past few months,” Pazaski said. “Our major concentration now is making sure that we're processing all in-collect and out-collect records on a timely basis, getting the files and information from our clearinghouse, EDS, and making sure that our call records are going out within a day or two of being processed on the switch.”

In the past, Western Wireless' roaming department focused on rate negotiations with partners and auditing. However, Pazaski considers the shift in focus a learning experience.

“We get to see the migration of a call-detail record from its inception to going out the door to a clearinghouse and on to our roaming partners,” Pazaski said. “What a great opportunity to learn.”

Pazaski said a typical day in his 13-person department consists of ensuring timely record processing, communicating with the clearinghouse, receiving trouble requests from some of its more than 100 roaming partners and troubleshooting. In addition, the team continues to work on the Amdocs billing conversion in some markets.

Like the other roaming execs, Pazaski considers WNP and interoperability issues two of the biggies for roaming departments. But he said interoperability no longer is an issue for Western Wireless because the carrier supports CDMA, TDMA and analog now and plans to support GSM in the future.

Pazaski considers the biggest difficulties of his job to be the constant technological changes, switch upgrades and communicating with roaming partners, billing vendors and clearinghouses.

“I think those will always be a challenge,” he said.

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Roaming Desires

Here's how featured execs responded when asked what they want most from vendors and what vendors should understand about their operations.

Wish Lists

“Our technical support people have to have a way to access real-time information about the customers, where they are, what the problem might be and who the (roaming partner) is, so we can resolve the problem right then and there, instead of saying, ‘Gee, Mr. Customer, let me call you back in a couple of days.’”
— Kim Whaley, Alltel staff manager of wholesale pricing and roaming

“I'd like to have a customer-service commitment by and between roaming partners.” The agreement would detail the expected levels of service and the penalties for not achieving those levels.
— Brian McMahon, U.S. Cellular director of intercarrier services

“If you have vendors out there that are stepping up to the plate and able to provide an opportunity for carriers to make switch changes and point-code changes seamlessly through the Web, that would be nice to have.”
— Kevin Pazaski, Western Wireless senior manager of roaming and message-processing systems

What Vendors Should Know

“Instead of telling me what your system can do, come watch what I do. Come watch what I have to go through with people and hear the frustration in my customers' voices. Then build your support tools around that.”
— Whaley