Malaysia’s Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) recently signed an agreement with UK’s British Telecommunications PLC (BT) that will allow customers on both sides to enjoy Wi-Fi roaming when travelling from one country to the other. Apart from leveraging on each other’s Wi-Fi networks, the agreement will also allow both sides to monetise this UK-Malaysia roaming services.
With this agreement, BT will have access to TM‘s nationwide Wi-Fi coverage in Malaysia which will be included as part of BT’s Global Wi-Fi roaming hub. The same goes for TM too as it will now be able to interconnect with the BT’s hub, and is expected to allow TM subscribers to have access to other UK and international Wi-Fi hotspots while traveling to these partner countries. BT and other members of the roaming hub are expected to benefit from TM‘s 4,600 hotspot locations, covering airports, hotels, conventions centres and cafes, in the same way that TM‘s subscribers will, with the hub’s 400,000 hotspots in the UK.
Access to BT’s Global Wi-Fi roaming hub is claimed not to involve complicated authentication processes and is said to provide a seamless Wi-Fi experience with the use of Mobile Network Operator (MNO) standard authentications. This implementation will also reduce capital expenditure (CaPex) requirements by enabling a simple and easy way to manage roll-outs for standard, complementary, or converged Wi-Fi roaming services (combining 2G, 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi roaming). Those 400k hotspots that was mentioned earlier support Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISPr) authentication, and 12k of those even have support for both WISPr and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) authentications. TM has yet to provide information on how its subscribers will be able to enjoy this service when abroad, but BT users already have their BT Wi-Fi app to assist them with.
As for the charges, services and coverage, we’re not sure if it will be much better than what Boingo currently offers, or even the one provided by Skype.
At the signing ceremony at BT’s office in London, TM was represented by Mohamad Rozaimy Abd Rahman, its Executive Vice President, Global & Wholesale, while Andrew Dodsworth, Vice President, Global Telecom Markets was there to sign on behalf of the host. The two were accompanied by staffs on both sides including Ganesh John Sivasamboo, General Manager, Regional Alliances, Global & Wholesale, TM; Rossman Omar, Vice President, Carrier Sales, Global & Wholesale, TM; and Bhavin Shah, TM UK Country Director.
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