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Wireless Broadband Innovations – key trends in 2007 and beyond
Publication: 25.06.2007 by Christian Thrysoe
The Wireless industry is growing and is becoming an integral part of an operator’s product portfolio for securing customer retention and reducing churn (a measure of the number of subscribers who leave or switch to another carrier’s service). However, this is depends on whether this market situation is viewed as an opportunity or a threat.
The Wireless market is; as opposed to the mobile market, based on an unlicensed spectrum resulting in many new entrants dominating the market. This leads to a downward spiral as the new entrants are blurring up traditional business models, making it difficult for established operators to create a financially sound business case.
New-entrants are racing to the market with an incredible pace, launching services with limited or no business processes in place in order to reach a limited number of subscribers in the here and now – often with no vision or strategy to scale the solutions to a larger extent. The consequences are that the launched services typically include manual procedures, cumbersome processes and non-interoperable interfaces, limiting the players in the market who can scale the solutions to nationwide or international scales.
Fortunately some initiatives exist in the market to address these issues. One of these is the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), which asked the leading Data Clearing House providers to facilitate roaming amongst the WBA members, by providing a scaleable architecture for real-time authentication and billing and settlement. This work was initiated around mid 2005 and was finished early 2007, complete with a full set of specifications that supports a scalable model for Wireless Broadband Roaming. This enables Wireless network providers and Wireless service providers to take full advantage of an exploding market in a scalable fashion, with clearly defined interfaces, processes and procedures to support Wireless Broadband Roaming as a day-to-day operation. The name of the specifications is WRIX.
Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards 2007
The revolutionary Wireless Roaming Intermediary eXchange (WRIX) by Wireless Broadband Alliance was voted the winner entry for the ‘Best WiFi Product or Service’ category.
What is WRIX? Why is it having such an impact in the industry?
WRIX is a modularized standard service specification for the interaction between operators implementing and operating Wireless Broadband Roaming. WRIX specifies the interfaces for Wireless Broadband Roaming Interconnection, Accounting and Data & Financial Clearing via the following 3 elements forming the WRIX specification:
- WRIX-i = for Radius Interconnection.
- WRIX-d = for Data Clearing (wholesale accounting).
- WRIX-f = for Financial Clearing (wholesale billing).
WRIX has many key USPs. Whole standard service specifications or selected modules of the Wireless Broadband Roaming implementation and day-to-day operations can be outsourced to the current WRIX vendors, such as:
- Interconnection and mediation.
- Data Clearing (Accounting, Rating and Revenue assurance).
- Financial Clearing (Billing).
The WRIX standard can be used for the interconnection and the wholesale interface of any convergent broadband data service. The interconnection concept is commercially implemented with more than 300 roaming agreements operational.
Benefits for operators
WRIX can be operated in-house or operators can outsource any of the modules. Outsourcing WRIX tasks is even more beneficial as it enables operators to have a speedy implementation of Wireless Broadband Roaming and smooth day-to-day operations.
The WRIX standard service specification enhances the current fragmentation of the WBR implementations and day-to-day operations in the following ways:
- Removes multiple VPN connections with different configurations.
- Eliminates the need for multiple and different RADIUS configurations.
- Implements a standardized method for the mediation of RADIUS Accounting to CDRs,
which can be rated.
- Introduces and applies a standardized wholesale rating of mediated RADIUS Accounting
CDRs, supporting all possible charging principles (Duration, Volume, Session and/or a
mixture of these).
- Implements a standardized method to make revenue assurance (SOX).
- Creates a standardized way of exchanging data for invoices, leading to reduced
financial clearing discrepancies.
Key contributors
MACH, the leading global clearing and settlement partner for mobile based transactions, has played a significant role participating and contributing in the evolution of all of the WRIX elements:
- WRIX-i for Radius Interconnection.
- WRIX-d for Data Clearing (wholesale accounting).
- WRIX-f for Financial Clearing (wholesale billing).
MACH’s principles have been used in the implementation of these innovative solutions. Specifically, Christian Thrysoe, Product Manager from MACH wrote the majority of the standard service specification for WRIX-d for Data Clearing (wholesale accounting). Tommy Bertling, Chairman of the Wireless Broadband Alliance WRIX Working Group, drafted the standard service specification for WRIX-f for Financial Clearing (wholesale billing) with Michelle Urtel, Product Manager from MACH.
Commercial potential
The commercial aspects of implementing WRIX in the market is an extension of Wireless Broadband’s offer to a wide number of roaming partners to extend their Wireless Broadband offering worldwide beyond their own hotspots, as well as increasing their revenues from inbound Broadband Roamers. Moreover, the implementation of WRIX will result in the greater efficiency of day-to-day operations for Wireless Broadband Roaming over time, as well as increased cost effectiveness. The reason for this is that WRIX can be outsourced to ‘WRIX vendors’, who can implement a more effective scalability for the Wireless Broadband Roaming Interconnection, Accounting and Data & Financial Clearing.
The take-up of WRIX has already rapidly begun and MACH has been selected as the provider of WRIX services by several WBA members. Leading operator Swisscom Mobile (Chair of the WRIX standard service specification workgroup), has selected MACH as their WRIX provider. MACH has also been selected to provide complete WRIX services for Smart, Philippines, and WRIX-i services for PT WiFi.
MACH is convinced that WRIX is the key to the future of Wireless Broadband Roaming and is excited to be a key contributor to this. Without a standardized approach to facilitate roaming between Wireless Broadband Roaming players represented by players from different industry segments, full advantages of future mobile technologies based on IEEE networking technologies would not be possible for a long time. This will impact the evolution of both Fixed Mobile Convergence and mobile WiMAX. WRIX is definitely a large step in the right direction.
www.mach.com
