NTT DOCOMO joined this commercial Wi-Fi roaming program to effectively meet the objectives of the ICP and exchange technical and commercial information. We wanted to contribute to the structure of the standard frameworks (a set of technical and commercial templates), as we saw that this would be beneficial to us and every operator to utilize these frameworks. This will streamline the requirements and procedures process and enable us to expand our own Wi-Fi roaming partnerships. We believe that the ICP is important for facilitating interoperability and we are very pleased to contribute and ultimately benefit the Wi-Fi ecosystem.
What we hope to get out of our participation in the ICP is to establish operational guidelines to enable Wi-Fi commercial roaming, as well as apply our proposals to the operational guidelines based on our own commercial Wi-Fi roaming experiences. In addition, we aim to promote the use of the ICP guidelines in operation and feed this back to the WBA.
NTT DOCOMO expects to complete the trial once the majority of the ICP participants have finished network self-assessments and ascertained the level of roaming service they currently provide. The best practice of each Tier will also need to be clarified before we reach completion.
Following our participation in the ICP, by the end of 2013 we aim to have expanded Wi-Fi roaming with many operators and will go on to further utilize ICP to facilitate roaming partnerships.
By Mr. Atsuhisa Shirai, Director, Head of International roaming, Global Business Dept.of NTT DOCOMO, INC and Board Director of the Wireless Broadband Alliance
