Telekom Austria Group and Telenor Global Services--the international carrier division of Telenor Group--penned an LTE roaming deal that opens the door to a potential market of 220 million subscribers globally.
The LTE roaming peering interconnection deal covers Central and Eastern Europe, the Nordics and Asia. In a statement, the operators said the deal expands their respective LTE coverage and will ensure a consistent quality of service, and experience, for roaming subscribers.
"Mobile subscribers are increasingly expecting high quality access to their services whether they are at home or travelling," said Stefan Amon, director wholesale at Telekom Austria. "Telekom Austria Group reports a customer base of approximately 23 million retail customers who will benefit enormously from these enhanced services," he added.
The peering agreement builds on an existing GPRS roaming exchange (GRX) deal between Telekom Austria and Telenor, and will also utilise the pair's respective IP Exchange (IPX) networks.
Telenor noted the agreement with Telekom Austria is the latest in several such peering deals it has agreed with operators to enable widespread LTE coverage and roaming services. The operator also stated that a growing number of operators are using global IPX-enabled components including Signaling/S6a and S9 (Diameter), Data/S8 and VoLTE to enable global roaming services.
Bjørn Iversen, CMO at Telenor Global Services, said the agreement with Telekom Austria Group "is further evidence of our commitment to deliver quality services to our subscribers, who are increasingly demanding greater speed, end-to-end quality, security and reach."
The LTE roaming peering agreement "is important to both parties as it enables two mobile groups to expand their LTE/4G global footprint and thus to provide its end users with world class 4G coverage," Iversen added.
Experts speaking at the LTE Voice Summit in London last year noted that IPX will play a key role in enabling voice roaming on LTE networks. IPX providers can help to overcome interoperability problems between IMS providers, and generally cut the number of deals individual operators have to strike to enable VoLTE, they said.
For more:
- see this joint announcement
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