Vodafone, BICS, polish up roaming hub deal

International carrier services collaboration BICS, which is formed of Belgacom, Swisscom and MTN, has pooled roaming resources with Vodafone Roaming Services to connect their respective roaming hubs. The move will initially simplify the administration of roaming traffic between the Belgacom, MTN, and Vodafone networks but will eventually expand to handle all operator members of both hubs.

As well as decreasing the administrative and technical tasks associated with roaming, the move will enable all operators on both roaming hubs to increase the number of roaming services and destinations they can market to, the firms said.

Whereas roaming agreements can be struck in a bilateral manner between two operators, creating more complexities and paperwork with each agreement, roaming hubbing seeks to improve the process by allowing operators to join hubs and have the hubs strike interconnect deals with other hubs.

“This cooperation is a major step for the mobile industry to guarantee seamless roaming for all mobile users when they cross national borders, and is a direct response to the expansion of the mobile environment globally in terms of subscribers, networks, technologies and applications”, said Daniel Kurgan, CEO of BICS.