The Hindu Business Line : Wherever you go, you're mine!

Mobile telecom operators need to tie up with other players to offer roaming services. But they are loath to see revenue stray from their own networks. Technology offers ways to retain both the call and the moolah. A look at initiatives u p in the air.

MOBILE operators the world over are tweaking their roaming services to serve all kinds of purposes.

Such tweaking can keep the roaming revenues within one operator's network so that the income does not have to be shared with others.

Other software can offer easy local-like roaming to an operator's customers wherever they are, that can allow operators to charge close to local call rates, thereby encouraging more of their customers to use roaming.

Other technologies specialise in implementing exchange of roaming bilaterals.

That is, if I, as a new operator, have not tied up bilaterally with 200 other operators across the globe for international roaming, I can buy the roaming rights of another operator who has these bilaterals and use them myself.

For this I need a technology platform by which to do so.

Keeping calls within one's own network means this. If a Mumbai Airtel customer roams into, say Chennai, he will find that he sometimes gets BSNL's Cellone signal, sometimes Airtel's itself, sometimes Aircel's.

Now if this Airtel customer continues on the Cellone signal, then Airtel's revenues from the calls that this customer receives and makes out of Chennai will have to be shared with CellOne.

But if the customer remains on Airtel, then Airtel would retain the termination fees from the call.

Currently roaming is not tweaked very much nationally (in India). That is because the operators are busy still rolling out their networks in several cities and towns.

But wherever possible, they send SMSes to their roaming customers telling them to manually select their own home networks.

Other competing operators can pitch in to try to get this customer. It is common for a `roamer' to get a message saying: "Welcome to Kerala. Stay on (or move to) IDEA/Airtel/etc to participate in this or that contest and win this big prize."

National tweaking of roaming may take some time to happen, but internationally the revenues involved are much higher and operators are very keen that their customers remain within their corporate group's network.

Megasoft Ltd, an Indian company, provides such call routing for Teleglobe, a wholesale voice and VoIP provider.

This intelligent roaming routing technology helps to keep calls within an operator's network (Teleglobe services various operators).

For example, Vodafone, which has operations across the globe (this can be in joint venture with other operators in other countries) can make sure that wherever its customers go, they are in one of Vodafone's network/sister networks so that maximum revenues are retained by the Vodafone group, says G.V. Kumar, CEO and Managing Director of Megasoft.

Not always for revenue

Roaming redirection need not always be used for retaining revenues, says Abraham Punnoose, Global Director for Marketing and Business at Roamware that has 200 million mobile users worldwide running on its roaming redirection solution.

"Sometimes the operator wants to ensure a uniform quality of service to its customers. At other times, the operator has promised to retain his customer by offering him the cheapest service. This operator will want to put its customer on the cheapest network wherever he goes, and not necessarily in its own network."

Several of Roamware's international service provider customers also provide this kind of call routing nationally too.

Roamware recently launched a Prepaid Local Number (PLN) service that can give every operator the capability to provide enhanced roaming and home network services to pay-as-you-go, or prepaid, visitors.

According to Roamware, 40 per cent of today's GSM prepaid base worldwide cannot roam but only have limited services since not all operators worldwide are CAMEL-compliant (this enables billing and full-fledged roaming to prepaid customers).

PLN enables visiting prepaid roamers to sign up to the visited network through their mobile device and be allocated one or more local prepaid numbers.

(For instance, a France Telecom customer can come from Europe and get a local Airtel prepaid number).

If his service is not CAMEL-compliant, he cannot make calls out of India. Now, the visiting roamer can then use both his or her home number, as well as the India local number in parallel.

Additionally, when the roamer is using the Prepaid Local Number(s), incoming calls are free (otherwise he would have to pay the France-India roaming tariff), providing an attractive tariffing opportunity, says Punnoose.

Operators utilising the Roamware solution retain the revenue from both international roaming subscription calls and the local subscription services (including voice, SMS and GPRS) they provide to the visiting roamers, thus building a significant and sustained incremental revenue stream, he says.

Still other solutions help in trading roaming bilaterals. Megasoft has such a technology. "A new operator in Afghanistan or Turkmenistan cannot immediately tie up with 100 different operators across the globe to offer roaming to its customers. Such an operator cannot target high ARPU (average revenue per user) customers, also income from roaming revenue is high for high trade routes, so it is a big loss for it.

But it can buy roaming rights from someone who has roaming bilaterals. Several mobile companies in the developing world are in need to avail of roaming bilaterals from others," says Kumar of Megasoft.

Megasoft has partnered with BPL Mobile in India and TM Mobile in Sri Lanka, which have roaming arrangements with a large number of operators worldwide. And 14 to 18 per cent of such revenues comes to the consortium of Megasoft and BPL Mobile (or TM Mobile, as the case may be).

The seller in this case is BPL or TM, while Megasoft makes the technology platform available for this.

"There is no end to the possibilities that technologies can offer mobile companies," says an executive with a large mobile services operator. "So much is possible just on the roaming feature. There are still other areas of mobile service that mobile technology companies can address." There are several companies worldwide such as Roamware, Syniverse and the like working on such solutions. Several Indian solution providers too, both big and small, are working on this. In addition, overseas technology companies are increasingly bringing their R&D divisions to India.

It is no wonder that telecom software professionals now command much higher salaries than other software experts.

"And within that, mobile software professionals are currently the most in demand," says Kumar.

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

kripram@thehindu.co.in

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