NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile and Korea Telecom have used this year's Mobile World Congress to announce two agreements to facilitate international Wi-Fi and NFC roaming.
The operators revealed they have settled on a joint Wi-Fi inbound roaming scheme covering China, Japan and South Korea, and are exhibiting details at the show.
The scheme will allow international mobile and/or Wi-Fi operators to roam on hotspots in the three countries, via hubs set up to support it. China Mobile International will be one of the hub operators.
DoCoMo, KT and China Mobile aim to launch the new service in the second quarter.
The operators will all adopt EAP-SIM authentication technology to make connection easier for consumers. All three are also currently participating in Wireless Broadband Alliance’s Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) trial, which aims to further simplify Wi-Fi roaming.
Separately, the trio has come to an agreement on the likely handset and services requirements required for NFC international roaming throughout Asia.
The operators have used MWC to publish whitepapers laying out the technical requirements to realize NFC service roaming in Asia. The papers lay out deployment guidelines for mobile operators and merchants and technical requirements for vendors, based on NFC standards work.
China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo and KT formed a business collaboration in January 2011, and these two projects are a result of the alliance.
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