"Roaming" phones may be the best thing that happened to the business traveler or just anybody who is often away from home, but telecom operators are saying that the market has not seen the best of the service yet.
Global or international roaming, while very user-friendly and convenient to use, is actually made possible by a complex collaboration among network operators in over 200 countries, not only in technical matters but also on issues such as billing procedures, authentication processes and mobility management.
Due to the differences in telecoms regulatory policies and technical standards used in each country, the service infrastructure is still very limited at this time, usually just confined to voice calls and SMS.
An alliance of telecoms operators in the Asia-Pacific region formed last year aims to take "global roaming" to the next level by building a service platform that seeks to integrate the diverse service offerings of telecom companies across the region and hopes to "harmonize (their) divergent technologies."
The Bridge Mobile Alliance, a joint venture among eight leading mobile operators in the Asia-Pacific, currently has a combined subscriber base of 70 million. This strength, according to its website (www.bridgemobile.com), could spur accelerated development of products and services.
Globe Telecom is the Philippine partner of the alliance. Thus, Globe subscribers can automatically avail themselves of the benefits and services offered by the Bridge Mobile Alliance when traveling overseas.
The other members of the alliance include India’s Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd., Hong Kong’s CSL, Malaysia’s Maxis, Australia’s Optus, Singapore’s SingTel, Taiwan Mobile, and Indonesia’s Telkomsel. Each of these operators invested equity and capital in the alliance to fund the suite of Bridge services and platforms.
In an e-mail interview, Andrew Buay, Globe Telecom chief operating advisor, said Bridge members have implemented common short code access numbers allowing a traveler to access home services such as voicemail, customer service hotline and other content via the same access codes used in his home-country.
"Through the Bridge regional prepaid top-up service, a prepaid roamer can top up his prepaid mobile account even when traveling by going to any business center of a Bridge partner," Buay said. "In contrast, when a prepaid traveler ran out of load in the past, he (could not) make any more calls (since) such a facility did not exist."
In case a traveler encounters problems in another country such as losing his phone or SIM card, he can also go to a Bridge Concierge counter in any of the eight countries for assistance and have the phone or the SIM card replaced. The SIM card will be compatible with all phones supported by member-operators. The phone, however, is covered by the local warranty where it is purchased and not international warranty.
For Globe subscribers, other benefits include being able to connect to GPRS and send MMS to any subscriber of another mobile network belonging to the Bridge Mobile Alliance. Bridge Concierge also has handset purchase and loan programs available to members.
As third-generation (3G) technology is becoming the norm in the region, future service offerings may include regional mobile commerce, enterprise applications and regional content services, Buay said.
In a statement during the formal launch of the alliance in November 2004, Lim Chuan Poh, chairman of Bridge Mobile and CEO of SingTel, said, "The region is made up of highly diversified cultures, economies, mobile market maturity and varying degrees of mobile development."
This, he said, prevented mobile operators from capitalizing on economies of scale. He also cited the risk of market fragmentation because of the different standards used.
However, he said that the alliance hopes to make the partnership work, especially in the area of introducing new services across countries and cross-sharing of market information.
In a press statement during the launch of a suite of regional mobile services, including Bridge Prepaid, Bridge Roaming and Bridge Enterprise Solutions, the alliance said it was prepared to invest over $40 million in the next three years to build a "shared regional mobile infrastructure" in the Asia-Pacific.