Mobile Roaming 07

• What is out there as examples of international services?
• How to "raise the bar" on international services
• Demonstrating the high level of customer expectations when going abroad
• How can the mobile industry reach these expectations?

• Understanding how roaming behaviour patterns and attitudes are changing in reaction to new pricing structures and the availability of new technologies
• What has been the impact of lower prices on traffic levels – have they gone up?
• Have the SMS and data roaming prices come down since the pricing caps – is there the risk of new legislation?
• Analysing how operators are building in non-voice services to drive roaming revenues
• Charting falling retail roaming rates and determining the impact on overall revenues
• Outlining the membership details and structure of the different regional alliances
• Forecasting roaming subscribers, traffic and revenues to 2011

• Overview of regulatory  developments #Final shape of regulation as adopted by Council and Parliament
• The Commission’s continuing follow-up - future moves

• Outlining the key proposals of the new EU Regulation such as the capping of roaming charges and enabling existing customers as well as new customers to benefit from cheaper roaming tariffs
• What will be the impact of the price capping on non-EU operators and customers, specifically wholesale IOTs
• What will be the effect of the new EU regulations on operator revenues? Will operators still see roaming as a profitable business that is worth investing in? what will the impact of the pricing caps have on smaller operators?
• Status of Regulation for SMS roaming is it a target and other data services or have the prices dropped since the pricing caps?
• Is there anti competitive practice in roaming agreements for SMS?

• The IMVNO – International MVNO – tackling long-haul roaming with multiple identities
• The real costs of roaming are felt the farther away you travel – why a border strategy isn’t enough for mobile travellers
• Users want both local call costs and local identities – how to give them their cake and eat it too
• Data and VoIP – what role do they play in the IMVNO strategy?
• Case Study: Creating a Hong Kong MVNO for inbound travellers

• Alternate Mobile roaming solution offered by MVNOs
• How MNO view the emergence of those new players
• Market impact of MVNOs for the Roaming within and outside Europe
• Impact of the new EC regulations on the MVNOs positionned on roaming in and outside Europe

• Enabling the move to smarter traffic management
• Demonstrating the use of intelligent, network based tools - steering techniques including PLMN-lists embedded on the SIM card, OTA updates to the SIM, SS7-steering
• How to develop the roaming service offerings of operators with the focus on growing traffic and enabling roamers to roam
• Moving beyond GSM steering to Wi-Fi, WiMAX and other technologies traffic steering
• What is the status of anti-steering techniques?

• Maintain your revenue in a regulated world with decreasing tariffs
• Discover hidden treasures - enable operators to gain more from existing traffic
• Reveal issues that block the way to smooth service - Bypasses, Short cuts, tips and tricks that will make subscribers (and you) happier
• Increase production - Roaming departments are responsible for about 20% of operators’ revenue - can these guys produce more?
• Supply your roamers with a total seamless user-experience, regardless of their segment(post paid, prepaid, 3G, business, youth etc.)

• Key drivers for IOT discount model in a developed wholesale roaming environment
• Characteristics of different discount models and the advantages and disadvantages for outbound & inbound operators
• Different discount models per service (voice, SMS, data)
• New innovative discount models
• The impact of EU regulation on IOT discounting in Europe and between EU and non-EU operators
• The amount of needed discount partners per country
• How to maintain and develop long term IOT discount partnership between operators
• The impact of discount payment methods on cash flow

• How have the EU pricing caps affected retail pricing strategies and approaches?
• Is the window now closing on roaming price arbitrage?
• Implementing price elasticity and optimisation and redressing premium pricing
• Creating retail pricing structures they can be easily communicated – consistency and transparency
• Debating the different options: flat rate pricing, bundles, “bolt-on” price plans and zonal pricing, peak and off peak pricing
• Distinguishing between the frequent traveller and the holiday maker: prices for business roamers and prices for consumer roamers – customer segmentation to create customer value driven pricing
• Being creative with SMS and data roaming pricing

• How to enable integrated connectivity across technologies?
• What are the segmentation solutions for data roaming?
• Is cost as prohibitive barrier to data roaming?
• Statistical results on data roaming ARPU
• What are the current regulatory issues and what may they be in the future?
• What is the future of data roaming?
• What is the future Interconnect model (IPX) and how it can be used to increase roaming data revenues?

• Roaming market overview (growth forecast and regional perspective)
• The roaming opportunities and challenges for SMS and MMS data roaming
• The international wholesale carrier role: beyond SMS and MMS data roaming
• The "mobile solution enabler": the new partner for roaming

• Implementing novel thinking and not just basic products
• SMS roaming – how to introduce non-voice roaming services to emerging markets roaming services
• How to deploy innovative roaming SMS services
• What is the success and charging model for these SMS roaming services?

• How does GPRS roaming create efficiency and freedom for roaming customers?
• Benefits of data roaming for business customers
• Most popular data services for roaming customers
• Major obstacles for take-up of data roaming
• What is the uptake of the GPRS roaming service and how is the customer base segmented?
• Using data roaming as Unique Selling Point to the business market
• Who are the typical users of data roaming and how do they contribute to the overall business of the mobile operator
• How to make the consumer market use data roaming
• What are the pricing models for these GPRS roaming services?
• Finding the attractive price model for data roaming (Case studies from the Asia and Europe)
• The data roaming price ‘trap’ - price differences between home country data usage and roaming usage

• How MVNO's can eliminate expensive roaming charges and access pre-paid international revenue streams to best effect
• Forecasted market pressures which will further decrease EU Roaming tariffs and how this will affect value chain players
• How multimode roaming and device interoperability will facilitate international roaming services
• Next generation roaming platforms and what they will offer operators and consumers

• How to position and deploy HSPA roaming?
• Who needs HSPA roaming?
• HSPA data access plan for roamer to encourage HSPA usage
• Addressing wholesale and retail pricing
• What are the challenges? – inter-operability between HPMN and VPMN, customer communication

• Does the customer want it ?
• Why it is expected to become a true mass market roaming VAS
• What airlines will offer it?
• Why it will help mobile network operators
• Improving churn, customer acquisition and ARPU
• Strengthening their positioning with corporate segments
• Improving GPRS adoption and usage rates
• What challenges lie ahead?

• Importance and contribution of roaming to Micro-economies
• Dependency on leisure-based tourism industry
• Catering to the diverse needs of the local market

• Offering a simple, fair and reliable service to customers abroad
• Launching roaming services to encourage additional voice usage through missed call alerts and call assist techniques
• Improving service levels and coverage using diagnostic tools and analysis of roamer traffic to predict traffic patterns better.
• Introducing new services and market opportunities eg:- In-flight roaming services enabling customers to use their own mobile and Maritime services, Local Roaming Number service with all the benefits of a local number
• Implementing destination content portals providing relevant and tailored content for communities

Join Thierry Aubert, GSMA GRQ Project Team, and Luc Van den Bogaert, Former Chairman of BARG, for a presentation and interactive session discussing the findings of the GRQ project and issues including

• Negotiating minimum QoS thresholds to ensure a guaranteed level of service for roaming customers
• Setting the commercial context of roaming quality improvement (maturity of the roaming market, penetration, regulation etc)
• Learning from case studies of roaming service failures
• Understanding how SLAs translate into benefits for customers
• Identifying KPIs for voice, SMS and data services
• Example of a specific test method offered in the market
• Challenges to overcome the reconciliation of test results between HPMN and VPMN

Session structure will be discursive and interactive with Q/A structure throughout encouraging delegates to bring thoughts/questions to the session on:

• Should VPMN and HPMN both test?
• What to do if QoS is low in cheaper network?
• Do we need certification of vendors and test methods to avoid conflicts?
• Will roaming SLA’s become part of every roaming agreement, or only part of commercial IOT agreements?

• What is the status of prepaid roaming in Europe?
• What are the hindrances to prepaid roaming and how are these effectively addressed?
• How to effectively utilise USSD call back and CAMEL
• What are the recharging options whilst roaming?
• Innovating the marketing, packaging and bundling of prepaid roaming services
• The role of third party services and players in the success of prepaid roaming

• What are the major categories of roadblocks the operator faces ? • What solutions are currently available to help the operator resolve or circumvent those challenges?
• Is it possible to reconcile fast deployment of CAMEL destinations with long term objectives such as cost control and autonomy?

• Reassessing inbound roaming strategies to increase roaming revenues
• Creating a harder commercial edge to roaming departments
• Outsourcing technical and administrative tasks to third parties
• What will be the different type of services?
• What are the challenges? – MNP, roaming users and commercial elements
• Results of the Hub trials – technical and commercial agreements

• Who needs roaming managers anymore?
• Outsourcing technical and administration functions
• What will be the clearing houses role? Wi-Fi?

• Increasing roaming by creating optimised synergies between:
• roaming marketing
• promotion of roaming services
• tariff policy
• new value-added services development
• Developing new innovative strategies based on roaming behaviors of the customer
• Co-ordinating marketing communication activities and improving the roaming awareness of Turkcell's roamers

• Learning form customer insights
• Effectively addressing what they want such as transparent pricing, at home functionality
• What are the challenges of delivery – preferred network approach versus an independent network approach
• How to balance the needs of the customer with the objectives of the business

• How do we gain feedback from the customer
• How do we utilise this feedback in the production of roaming services
• How do we price for roaming services taking into account customer feedback
• Examples of successful roaming services developed from customer experience

•  Introduction & roaming market figures
• GSMA recommandations for Roaming
• Current status of traffic steering available solutions
• Innovative combined solution with SIM, OTA and SS7
• Other roaming services to ease access and brings convenience for the end-user
• MNO use cases with key sucess factors

• How will the new EU regulation effect the growth of FMC services?
• Assessing the different types of content available
• Communicating the benefit of FMC services to the consumer
• Overcoming the technical challenges of delivering roaming services over multiple devices and multi-mode networks
• Outlining current service offerings and pricing structures

• What will be the impact and opportunities of the new EU regulation on the roaming market?
• How to become a key player in the fixed-mobile convergence market and evolve successfully towards next-generation all-IP networks based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
• Voice Call Continuity (VCC) as a driver for cellular to Wi-Fi roaming
• Adopting a service led approach towards IMS
• Challenges to address call handover technology aspects, how call routing decisions are managed and controlled, how to apply intelligent rating and charging to calls that move between the Wi-Fi and cellular domains, and how to ensure the interoperability of valueadded services between these domains

• The WiMAX Roaming Vision - a service timeline and challenges along the way
• The factor of Operator Input with WiMAX
• WiMAX / Roaming Service Models and how they co-exist
• Inter-Technology Roaming
• WiMAX Roaming - technical overview