Roaming

          In wireless telecommunications, roaming is a general term referring to the extension of connectivity service in a location that is different from the home location where the service was registered.

          The details of the roaming process differ among types of cellular networks, but in general, the process resembles the following:

* When the mobile device is turned on or is transferred via a handover to the network, this new "visited" network sees the device, notices that it is not registered with its own system, and attempts to identify its home network. If there is no roaming agreement between the two networks, maintenance of service is impossible, and service is denied by the visited network.

* The visited network contacts the home network and requests service information (including whether or not the mobile should be allowed to roam) about the roaming device using the IMSI number.

*If successful, the visited network begins to maintain a temporary subscriber record for the device. Likewise, the home network updates its information to indicate that the mobile is on the host network so that any information sent to that device can be correctly routed.

          If a call is made to a roaming mobile, the public telephone network routes the call to the phone's registered service provider, who then must route it to the visited network. That network must then provide an internal temporary phone number to the mobile. Once this number is defined, the home network forwards the incoming call to the temporary phone number, which terminates at the host network and is forwarded to the mobile.

          In order that a subscriber is able to "latch" on to a visited network, a roaming agreement needs to be in place between the visited network and the home network. This agreement is established after a series of testing processes called IREG (International Roaming Expert Group) and TADIG (Transferred Account Data Interchange Group). While the IREG testing is to test the proper functioning of the established communication links, the TADIG testing is to check the billability of the calls.

What is my home area?

Your home area is the geographical area that includes your rate plans minutes. The area you have as home is determined by the rate plan that you signed up for when you joined our service.

Types of roaming

• Regional roaming:

          This type of roaming refers to the ability of moving from one region to another region inside national coverage of the mobile operator. Initially, operators may have provide commercial offers restricted to a region (sometimes to a town). Due to the success of GSM and the decrease in cost, regional roaming is rarely offered to clients except in nations with wide geographic areas like the USA, Russia, India, etc., in which there are a number of regional operators.

• National roaming:

          This type of roaming refers to the ability to move from one mobile operator to another in the same country. For commercial and license reasons, this type of roaming is not allowed unless under very specific circumstances and under regulatory scrutiny. This has often taken place when a new company is assigned a mobile telephony license, to create a more competitive market by allowing the new entrant to offer coverage comparable to that of established operators. In a country like India, where the number of regional operators is high and the country is divided into circles, this type of roaming is common.

• International roaming:

          This type of roaming refers to the ability to move to a Foreign Service provider's network. It is, consequently, of particular interest to international tourists and business travelers.

          Broadly speaking, international roaming is easiest using the GSM standard, as it is used by over 80% of the world's mobile operators. However, even then, there may be problems, since countries have allocated different frequency bands for GSM communications (there are two groups of countries: most GSM countries use 900/1800 MHz, but the United States and some other countries in the Americas have allocated 850/1900 MHz): for a phone to work in a country with a different frequency allocation, it must support one or both of that country's frequencies, and thus be tri or quad band.

 Inter-standards roaming:

          This type of roaming refers to the ability to move seamlessly between mobile networks of different technologies.

          Since mobile communication technologies have evolved independently across continents, there is significant challenge in achieving seamless roaming across these technologies. Typically, these technologies were implemented in accordance with technological standards laid down by different industry bodies.

          A number of the standards making industry bodies have come together to define and achieve interoperability between the technologies as a means to achieve inter-standards roaming. This is currently an ongoing effort.

• Inter MSC Roaming

          Network elements belonging to the same Operator but located in different areas. Pair depends on the switch and its location. Hence, software changes and a greater processing capability are required, but furthermore this situation could introduce the fairly new concept of roaming on a per MSC basis instead of per Operator basis. But this is actually a burden, so it is avoided.

• Trombone roaming:

          Roaming calls within a local tariff area, when at least one of the phones belong outside that area. Usually implemented with trombone routing also known as tromboning.