*Global Roaming? Not For A While
From the May 3, 1999 issue of Wireless Week
By Edward Warner
MIAMI--On a trade mission to promote international wireless roaming, Tom Wheeler got off a plane in England and his global
system for mobile communications phone worked well, but when he landed in New Delhi, India, the handset was useless.
Such is the state of international roaming, where U.S. travelers face difficulties in getting their phones to work on foreign
networks and visitors from abroad can't place calls here because American carriers are worried about fraud losses. But at a
Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association-sponsored conference here last week, manufacturers pledged to make more
varieties of multi-frequency phones. Motorola Inc. even promised a GSM-integrated digital enhanced network model, and one
of the industry's leading fraud experts told U.S. carriers to hold their noses and take the fraud risk. Carriers must "buy a certain
amount of risk" as a trade-off to gain market share, said Roseanna DeMaria, AT&T Wireless Services Inc.'s security vice
president.
In some respects, carriers have no choice. According to Wheeler, president and CEO of CTIA, the U.S. market is so
competitive carriers have no choice but to sell airtime to foreign visitors. Japan alone sends 5.4 million people here annually,
although all aren't adults, let alone wireless subscribers.
At least 88 percent of the travelers from Mexico and Central America come to the United States. And Latin American
subscribers are typically executives and high rollers--just the sort of customers American carriers want to attract as their
services became mass-market and price-sensitive.
American carriers also have to serve foreign roamers because the domestic roamer market is in danger--threatened by one-rate
plans that flaunt the seamlessness of U.S. roaming by making it free of added charges.
Though domestic roaming revenue climbed another $500 million this year to reach $3.5 billion in carrier revenue, "Roaming is
over as we know it," said Joy Nemitz, assistant marketing vice president at GTE Telecommunication Services Inc.
Investment banker Timothy O'Neil said carriers should support roaming to increase their corporate stock valuations. Simply
setting a specific target of supporting a set number of roamers is good, he elaborated, because "Wall Street rewards meeting
expectations."
If it's profitable for U.S. carriers to support foreign roamers, why aren't more doing it? For one, the compatibility problem goes
deeper than phones that are unable to use local frequencies or interfaces. Often, U.S. and foreign carrier systems can't
communicate, preventing the U.S. carrier from verifying the roamer's identity or being apprised of that customer's suite of
services.
In addition, underlying numbering plans in different countries are sometimes incompatible, creating embarrassing dialing
problems.
To keep an eye on customers and monitor potential fraud, U.S. carriers should ask foreign carriers to provide real-time
customer call reports for customers roaming into U.S. networks, said Systems/Link Corp. President Diane Sammer.
One of the few U.S. carriers that handles roaming appropriately is Omnipoint Corp., according to Michael Krier, Latin
America director for The Strategis Group. He said that because Omnipoint uses GSM, visitors from Europe only need bring
their phones' account cards, which they can slip into rented phones that run on the U.S. frequencies.
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