Enhancements to the legal and commercial framework and automation enables scaling and reduces cost and management overheads on Wi-Fi Roaming

In 2021 the Wireless Broadband Alliance announced the launch of Release 2 of the OpenRoaming standard, which enabled network and service providers, including Mobile Services Providers, Cable Operators and ISPs to offer an enhanced quality of experience (QoE) and QoS tiers to their subscribers, including voice, high-definition video streaming, gaming and more. In that time, the number of OpenRoaming hotspots around the world has officially grown to more than 1 million Access Points (APs) (link to PR here), and the game-changing roaming federation is showing no signs of slowing down.

And now, the WBA is proud to announce that the next iteration of OpenRoaming, Release 3, is here! With this release, we’ve enabled and enhanced several features, along with improvements on features from the previous two releases. These include the following:

  • OpenRoaming Release 3 delivers a complete legal and commercial framework, finalizing the processes started on Release 2, and this ability to implement a new templated approach will make commercial arrangements between federation members much easier and provide scalability. This will save hundreds of hours of legal and administrative time when establishing roamingsettlement agreements between OpenRoaming federation members. It also supports dynamic settlement, enabling settlement rates to vary at peak times and be agreed to dynamically.
  • In Release 3, OpenRoaminghas also been enhanced to include automated tools, reporting and APIs which reduce the overhead for management and administration while providing an online portal for federation members to self-serve.
  • Finally, enhanced Identity Proofing has been enabled so that identity providers are able to meet regulatory/legislative requirements as well as corporate and business requirements that ensure a user is who they say they are, guaranteeing the use of Wi-Fi Hotspots with OpenRoaming is safer for all

For more information on OpenRoaming, or to find out how you can get involved, visit https://openroaming.org/