Roaming Considerations for the Finnish Public Wlan Market

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are becoming increasingly popular in offices, homes, and public places. In public “hotspots” such as airports and hotels, these networks can be used to provide broadband wireless connectivity for people on the move. In Finland, hotspot networks are operated by TeliaSonera and DNA Finland. Because of interference issues, only one WLAN network can usually be built in one hotspot site. This leads to competition between the operators of the hotspot locations. Otherwise, the barriers for operators to enter the public WLAN market are sufficiently low. A number of different players are expected to enter the market, with different kinds of backgrounds. The business models pursued by the players may vary considerably. Roaming agreements can be used to enable subscribers of one operator to access their services using networks of other operators. A number of different roaming models exist, including bilateral agreement, clearinghouse, and roaming broker models. By far, the Finnish public WLAN operators have used bilateral agreements to enable roaming with international partners. National WLAN roaming is not available, decreasing the service coverage of all operators and hindering the success of the whole public WLAN market.