Wi-Fi industry gears up for roaming offensive

Wi-Fi roaming enabler RoamPoint is set to announce its first mobile phone network and hotspot operator partners next week when its so-called 'global roaming hub' goes live. According to RoamPoint CEO, Leon de Beer, the company will announce partnerships with three major GSM networks and sufficient WISPs to offer roaming across 5000 hotspots. Formed at the beginning of the year, RoamPoint was officially launched at the WLAN Event in London, today. The company essentially mediates between the mobile phone service providers and the hotspot network operators, handling authentication and billing. Its goal is to make it as easy for public hotspot users to roam from site to site as it is for, say, UK mobile phone customers to make and receive calls when they're overseas.

Wi-Fi providers are increasingly looking to attract the attention of large-scale customer 'owners', such as mobile phone companies, traditional ISPs and fixed-line telcos, rather than target punters directly. The theory goes that, rather than roll-out their own Wi-Fi hotspots, companies like these will partner with WISPs. The service providers get to offer their customers a branded access solution, while the WISPs' hotspots are exposed to a volume of users they could never hope to attract on their own.

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