powered
smartphone.
Regional or internal roaming This type refers to the ability of moving from one region to another region inside national coverage of the mobile operator ("internal roaming"). Initially, operators may have provided commercial offers restricted to a region (sometimes to a town). Due to the success of GSM and the decrease in cost, regional roaming is rarely offered to clients except in nations with wide geographic areas like the US, Russia, India, etc., in which there are a number of regional operators. Prior to 2019, in
Russia even country-wide operators charged different tariffs depending on whether the users are within or outside of their "home region". A number of legislative attempts in early days to remove the "internal roaming" failed due to opposition from operators. Following the
annexation of Crimea in 2014 the
Russian operators faced significant criticism as they did not offer their services inside Crimea directly, even though formally it's recognized as a regular
federal subject inside Russia. In 2019 however, Federal Law No. 527-FZ "On Amendments to Articles 46 and 54 of the Federal Law "On Communications"" was adopted, according to which, starting June 1, 2019, all mobile radiotelephone operators were prohibited charging a fee for incoming calls and SMS when registering in the network of a third-party operator (roaming partner), regardless of the region of Russia in which the subscriber is located, leading to all fees for incoming calls and SMS in national roaming being canceled for good.
National roaming This type refers to the ability to move from one mobile operator to another in the same country. For example, a
postpaid subscriber of
T-Mobile USA who is allowed to roam on
AT&T Mobility and/or the regional carriers
Viaero Wireless and
U.S. Cellular's networks would have national roaming rights;
prepaid providers on the other hand typically only allow a more restricted national roaming ability for cost reasons. For commercial and license reasons, this type of roaming is not allowed unless under very specific circumstances and under regulatory scrutiny. This has often taken place when a new company is assigned a mobile telephony license (such as
Free Italia's 10-year national roaming deal with
Wind Tre), to create a more competitive market by allowing the new entrant to offer coverage comparable to that of established operators (by requiring the existing operators to allow roaming while the new entrant has time to build up its own network), or where mobile network infrastructure has been destroyed by natural or man-made means, such as during the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine where Ukrainian mobile operators had to quickly implement national roaming with each other to compensate for network infrastructure destroyed in said invasion. In a country like India, where the number of regional operators is high and the country is divided into
telecom circles, this type of roaming is common. Following the launch of the Pebble Network in the UK on 15 July 2015, national roaming has been possible across the major UK networks at no additional cost using a Pebble Network SIM card.
International roaming This type of roaming refers to the ability to move to a foreign service provider's network. It is, consequently, of particular interest to international tourists and business travelers. Broadly speaking, international roaming is typically easiest when using the GSM standard, as it is used by over 80% of the world's mobile operators, and most devices support it. However, even then, there may be problems, since countries have allocated different frequency bands for GSM communications (there are two groups of countries: most GSM countries use 900/1800 MHz, but the
United States and some other countries in the Americas have allocated 850/1900 MHz): for a phone to work in a country with a different frequency allocation, it must support one or both of that country's frequencies, and thus be
tri or
quad band. If international roaming allows the traveler to stay connected during their trip, it can also generate significant costs for users, due to the trend of carriers pricing GSM usage internationally outrageously high if the traveler elects to not purchase an optional addon to their current phone service. In fact, the use of mobile networks outside its original country can lead to significant billing by its original mobile data operator without an addon to their current phone service.
Inter-standards roaming This type refers to roaming between two standards. This term is now widely used in mobile communications where especially
CDMA customers want to use their phone in areas where there is no CDMA network or there is no roaming agreement in place to support roaming on the used standard. In Europe there are hardly any CDMA networks. Most CDMA customers originate from the Americas or the Far East. In order to enable them to roam in Europe inter-standard roaming is the solution. The CDMA customers arriving in Europe can register on the available
GSM networks. Since mobile communication technologies have evolved independently across continents, there is significant challenge in achieving seamless roaming across these technologies. Typically, these technologies were implemented in accordance with technological standards laid down by different industry bodies and hence the name. A number of the standards making industry bodies have come together to define and achieve interoperability between the technologies as a means to achieve inter-standards roaming. This is currently an ongoing effort.
Mobile signature roaming Mobile signature roaming allows an
access point to get a
mobile signature from any end-user, even if the AP and the end-user have not contracted a commercial relationship with the same
MSSP. Otherwise, an AP would have to build commercial terms with as many MSSPs as possible, and this might be a cost burden. This means that a mobile signature transaction issued by an Application Provider should be able to reach the appropriate MSSP, and this should be transparent for the AP.
Inter-MSC roaming Network elements belonging to the same Operator but located in different areas (a typical situation where assignment of local licenses is a common practice) pair depends on the switch and its location. Hence, software changes and a greater processing capability are required, but furthermore this situation could introduce the fairly new concept of roaming on a per MSC basis instead of per Operator basis. But this is actually a burden, so it is avoided.
Permanent roaming This type refers to customers who purchase service with a
mobile phone operator intending to permanently roam, or be off-network. This becomes possible because of the increasing popularity and availability of "free roaming" service plan, where there is no cost difference between on and off network usage. The benefits of getting service from a mobile phone operator, that is not local to a user, can include cheaper rates, or features and phones that are not available on their local mobile phone operator, or to get to a particular mobile phone operator's network to get free calls to other customers of that mobile phone operator through a free unlimited mobile to mobile feature. Most mobile phone operators will require the customer's living or billing address be inside their coverage area or less often inside the government issued
radio frequency license of the mobile phone operator, this is usually determined by a computer estimate because it is
impossible to guarantee coverage. If a potential customer's address is not within the requirements of that mobile phone operator, they will be denied service. In order to permanently roam customers may use a false address and
online billing, or a relative or friend's address which is in the required area, and a 3rd party billing option. Most mobile phone operators discourage or prohibit permanent roaming since they must pay per minute rates to the network operator their customer is roaming onto. This is because they can not pass that extra cost onto customers ("free roaming").
Trombone roaming Roaming calls within a local tariff area, when at least one of the phones belong outside that area. Usually implemented with
trombone routing also known as
tromboning. ==See also== •
5G NR frequency bands •
European Union roaming regulations •
GSM frequency bands •
Handoff •
Home Location Register •
IEEE 802.11 •
IEEE 802.11f •
IEEE 802.11r •
LTE frequency bands •
Mobile IP •
Mobile phone •
Mobile phones on aircraft •
Mobility management •
Roaming SIM •
TADIG codes •
UMTS frequency bands •
Vertical handoff •
Visitor Location Register ==References==