Roaming Issues for Service Provisioning over 3 Generation Mobile Networks

3 generation systems such as UMTS will support the enrichment of the traditional service provision schemes via partnering of mobile network operators with other players in the marketplace, such as value added service providers and content providers. These partnerships will raise the bar on service provision requirements as well as roaming configurations. Roaming requirements for future mobile telecommunication networks suggest that the user of the mobile terminal should be readily able to discover and select any of the applicable services within the combined capabilities of the mobile terminal and the network infrastructure, independent of the network he has currently been registered. The present contribution attempts to address the challenging issue of roaming in the 3 generation mobile telecommunication systems, as well as to underline the technical requirements that a Release 99 UMTS platform have to fulfil so that generic service portability across networks can be achieved.