Roaming partnership the FreeMove Alliance has expanded into southern and Eastern Europe with the addition of Cosmote in Greece and Globul in Bulgaria, which join existing members Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom Orange, TeliaSonera and Telecom Italia.
The proposals announced by the European Commission (EC) will effectively end the European Union mobile roaming market as it stands today. By requiring operators to open their networks to any mobile service provider based on regulated wholesale rates, the EC has consigned to history the bi-lateral approach to striking roaming wholesale agreements which has been in place since the advent of GSM.
Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom/Orange have put months of rumours to rest with an announcement that they will combine procurement activities in an effort to save €400-900m over the next three years. The non-binding agreement, which will form the basis for contracts to be signed in the coming weeks, is an extension of the “smart industry” partnership announced by the pair in February this year.
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International carrier services collaboration BICS, which is formed of Belgacom, Swisscom and MTN, has pooled roaming resources with Vodafone Roaming Services to connect their respective roaming hubs together. The move will initially simplify the administration of roaming traffic between the Belgacom, MTN, and Vodafone networks but will expand to handle all operator members of both hubs.
Following in the footsteps of her predecessor, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, on Thursday blasted roaming costs as an “outdated concept”.
The global roaming market is expected to grow 86 per cent over the next five years, delivering revenues of $67bn by 2015, or 6.3% per cent of total mobile service revenues worldwide.
Nigerian mobile operators Starcomms claimed a world first, with the announcement that it has completed a prepaid inter-standard roaming call between GSM and CDMA networks.
New Zealand’s incumbent carrier Telecom has announced that it will cease operation of two of its CDMA services in the final quarter of this year. The WorldMode Roaming service will shut down on October 28th while the 3G EVDO data service will be switched off on November 30th. The firm will close down its CDMA voice network altogether in mid-2012.
Four of Europe’s largest mobile operators – Vodafone, Telefónica O2, T-Mobile and Orange – lost their battle with European authorities on Tuesday, after the European Court of Justice ruled that roaming caps can stick.
Middle East and African operator Zain said Wednesday that it is expanding its pioneering One Network to Egypt via a strategic partnership with Mobinil.
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