Roaming Nar
Silvia Habicht
In more technical terms, roaming refers to the ability for a cellular customer to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services, including home data services, when travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network. For example: should a subscriber travel beyond their cell phone company's transmitter range, their cell phone would automatically hop onto another phone company's service, if available.
Roaming is divided into "SIM-based roaming" and "username/password-based roaming", whereby the technical term "roaming" also encompasses roaming between networks of different network standards, e.g. WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) or GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). Device equipment and functionality, such as SIM card capability, antenna and network interfaces, and power management, determine the access possibilities.[1]
Although these user/network scenarios focus on roaming from GSM network operator's networks, clearly roaming can be bi-directional, i.e. from public WLAN operators to GSM networks. Traditional roaming in networks of the same standard, e.g. from a WLAN to a WLAN or a GSM network to a GSM network, has already been described above and is likewise defined by the foreignness of the network based on the type of subscriber entry in the home subscriber register.
The legal roaming business aspects negotiated between the roaming partners for billing of the services obtained are usually stipulated in so called roaming agreements. The GSM Association broadly outlines the content of such roaming agreements in standardized form for its members. For the legal aspects of authentication, authorization and billing of the visiting subscriber, the roaming agreements typically can comprise minimal safety standards, as e.g. location update procedures or financial security or warranty procedures.
In order that a subscriber is able to register on to a visited network, a roaming agreement needs to be in place between the visited network and the home network. This agreement is established after a series of testing processes called IREG (International Roaming Expert Group) and TADIG (Transferred Account Data Interchange Group). While the IREG testing is to test the proper functioning of the established communication links, the TADIG testing is to check the billability of the calls.
Several carriers in both the United States and India have eliminated these fees in their nationwide pricing plans. All of the major carriers[citation needed][which?] now offer pricing plans that allow consumers to purchase nationwide roaming-free minutes. However, carriers define "nationwide" in different ways. For example, some carriers define "nationwide" as anywhere in the U.S., whereas others define it as anywhere within the carrier's network.[2]
In the UK, the main network providers generally send text alerts to advise users that they will now be charged international rates so it is clear when this will apply. UK data roaming charges abroad vary depending on the nature of the phone agreement (either pay as you go or monthly contracts). Some carriers, including T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile, do not allow pay as you go customers to use international roaming without pre-purchase of an international "add on" or "bolt on."[3]
An operator intending to provide roaming services to visitors publishes the tariffs that would be charged in their network at least sixty days prior to its implementation under normal situations. The visited operator tariffs may include tax, discounts etc. and would be based on duration in case of voice calls. For data calls, the charging may be based on the data volume sent and received. Some operators also charge a separate fee for call setup i.e. for the establishment of a call. This charge is called a flagfall charge.
Following a European Commission vote on 15 December 2016, roaming charges within the European Union were to be abolished by June 2017. While the European Commission (EC) believed that ending roaming charges would stimulate entrepreneurship and trade, mobile operators had their doubts about the changes.[6]
On 15 June 2017, Regulation (EU) 2016/2286, nicknamed "Roam like at Home" and having been signed by the European Parliament and Commission in May of the same year came into force. It abolished all roaming charges within the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.[citation needed]
Countries that do not share a supra-national authority have also begun examining the provision of international roaming services. In April 2011, Singapore and Malaysia announced that they had agreed with operators to reduce voice and SMS rates for roaming between their two countries.[7] In August 2012, Australia and New Zealand published a draft report proposing coordinated action on roaming services.[8] This was followed by a final report in February 2013 recommending that the two countries equip their telecommunications regulators with an extended palette of regulatory remedies, when they investigate international roaming.[9] The Australian and New Zealand prime ministers subsequently announced that they would introduce legislation to effect the recommendations of the final report.[10]
On 1 July 2021, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Kosovo abolished roaming fees as part of Mini Schengen project, allowing SIM holders on those countries to use their domestic packages on another country in the agreement without having to pay their roaming fee. The agreement was signed in April 2019. There are no additional charges, just like in EU's "Roaming like home" project.[12][13]
This type refers to the ability of moving from one region to another region inside national coverage of the mobile operator ("internal roaming"). Initially, operators may have provided commercial offers restricted to a region (sometimes to a town). Due to the success of GSM and the decrease in cost, regional roaming is rarely offered to clients except in nations with wide geographic areas like the US, Russia, India, etc., in which there are a number of regional operators.
In Russia even country-wide operators charge different tariffs depending on whether the users are within or outside of their "home region". A number of legislative attempts to remove the "internal roaming" failed due to opposition from operators.[15] Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 the Russian operators are facing significant criticism as they do not offer their services inside Crimea directly, even though formally it's recognized as a regular federal subject inside Russia.[16]
This type refers to the ability to move from one mobile operator to another in the same country. For example, a postpaid subscriber of T-Mobile USA who is allowed to roam on AT&T Mobility and/or the regional carriers Viaero Wireless and U.S. Cellular's networks would have national roaming rights; prepaid providers on the other hand typically only allow a more restricted national roaming ability for cost reasons. For commercial and license reasons, this type of roaming is not allowed unless under very specific circumstances and under regulatory scrutiny. This has often taken place when a new company is assigned a mobile telephony license (such as Free Italia's 10-year national roaming deal with Wind Tre), to create a more competitive market by allowing the new entrant to offer coverage comparable to that of established operators (by requiring the existing operators to allow roaming while the new entrant has time to build up its own network), or where mobile network infrastructure has been destroyed by natural or man-made means, such as during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine where Ukrainian mobile operators had to quickly implement national roaming with each other to compensate for network infrastructure destroyed in said invasion.[17]
In a country like India, where the number of regional operators is high and the country is divided into telecom circles, this type of roaming is common. Following the launch of the Pebble Network in the UK on 15 July 2015, national roaming has been possible across the major UK networks at no additional cost using a Pebble Network SIM card.
This type of roaming refers to the ability to move to a foreign service provider's network. It is, consequently, of particular interest to international tourists and business travelers. Broadly speaking, international roaming is typically easiest when using the GSM standard, as it is used by over 80% of the world's mobile operators, and most devices support it. However, even then, there may be problems, since countries have allocated different frequency bands for GSM communications (there are two groups of countries: most GSM countries use 900/1800 MHz, but the United States and some other countries in the Americas have allocated 850/1900 MHz): for a phone to work in a country with a different frequency allocation, it must support one or both of that country's frequencies, and thus be tri or quad band. If international roaming allows the traveler to stay connected during their trip, it can also generate significant costs for users, due to the trend of carriers pricing GSM usage internationally outrageously high if the traveler elects to not purchase an optional addon to their current phone service. In fact, the use of mobile networks outside its original country can lead to significant billing by its original mobile data operator without an addon to their current phone service.[18]
This type refers to roaming between two standards. This term is now widely used in mobile communications where especially CDMA customers want to use their phone in areas where there is no CDMA network or there is no roaming agreement in place to support roaming on the used standard. In Europe there are hardly any CDMA networks. Most CDMA customers originate from the Americas or the Far East. In order to enable them to roam in Europe inter-standard roaming is the solution. The CDMA customers arriving in Europe can register on the available GSM networks.
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