Quiconnect

British Telecom

Quiconnect selected as BT’s WBA approved international Wi-Fi roaming interconnection

BT Openzone is one of the leading Wi-Fi providers in the UK and Ireland, enabling its customers to work, talk and play over high-speed wireless broadband at over 2,000 hotspots in premium locations directly managed by BT. This number is increasing weekly as BT continues its Wireless Cities programme, which has already been delivered in 12 major cities and continues to partner with hotels, airport lounges and public venues to deliver public Wi-Fi access. Furthermore, through roaming agreements with other Wi-Fi providers, BT Openzone customers can access over 35,000 sites globally.

Marjorie Leonidas, head of BT international roaming and wholesale partners, explains, “We are dedicated to fulfilling our ‘always best connected’ vision to consumers, businesses and local government so that irrespective of where people are, BT is there to provide connectivity whether it be for Internet, voice calls or gaming.”

Leonidas says, “Usage is greatest in key markets such as Western Europe and the USA, and our strategy is to fill countries with more providers rather than just expanding geographically for the sake of it.  China also offers long term potential because of the size of the market, the forthcoming Olympics and the fact that they use wireless broadband as a key connectivity technology.”

BT is a founding member of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) comprising many of the world’s leading telecom companies.  TheTheWBA’s goal is to drive adoption of wireless broadband technologies and services around the world through the development of common commercial, technical and marketing frameworks for wireless network interoperability.  BT Openzone partners with many of the WBA members, basing selection on what is strategic for the company and its customers.

In 2006, the WBA launched a new technical standard – known as WRIX[1] - to standardise and simplify how network operators and service providers interconnect to extend their network footprint in order to provide WLAN access to their subscribers on the move. To date, these interconnections have been bespoke, complicated and difficult to manage. The WRIX standard addresses these issues by standardising various criteria such as technical interconnections, data and reporting, along with financial and clearing house services.  It was recently recognised by the industry as the most innovative service of the year at the2007 Wireless Broadband Industry awards.

“A key value of participating in this roaming organisation is to agree the billing and clearing, and the way we trade and interconnect with partners,” Leonidas continues.

The challenge

 BT recognised that in order to grow international roaming partnerships and revenue,  it needed support from a specialist provider to aid the process of creating new relationships with local network operators and service providers globally to meet the Internet access needs of an ever mobile population.  Leonidas explains, “Like all businesses we have a certain level of resource available which means outsourcing to specialist providers where appropriate. This was needed in the case of international Wi-Fi interconnectivity.”

BT is continually striving to ensure that its subscribers have a consistent, seamless and simple Wi-Fi user experience as they travel internationally.  Leonidas says, “We want to make Wi-Fi access as simple as using a mobile phone where you turn on your handset, it automatically finds a network, you dial and make your call. With wireless broadband it has historically been a far more complex affair of having to go through various hurdles to get a connection.  All customers want to do is log on. When they can’t, they get frustrated, they don’t continue trying to connect, and we lose revenue. We want to continually address the user experience.”

The solution

In October 2006, BT chose Quiconnect as its WBA-approved WRIX partner to carry out migration work with other WBA members, and also to find new partnerships with other non-WBA telcos and network operators. 

Quiconnect was selected as it is a niche, specialist provider of systems integration and interconnectivity management solutions in the wireless broadband sector.  Through its carrier-grade interconnection management platform, Quiconnect connects discrete commercial IP networks worldwide to create multiple custom-tailored networks. Leonidas explains, “Quiconnect is helping with the technical back-end integration but also the commercial aspect of bringing us new relationships.  It takes a lot of time to find and broker new deals with partners, and Quiconnect has the commercial team to help BT drive this.”

Quiconnect was also selected because inherent in its approach to Wi-Fi interconnectivity is extending BT’s brand onto these third party networks.

To date, Quiconnect has completed the WBA migration work shifting BT from a legacy platform to its own platform, and doing the integration work with eight companies previously connected, namely T-Mobile USA, Maxis, Telecom Italia, Portugal Telecom, NTT, Swisscom Mobile, Orange and StarHub. 

Quiconnect has also interconnected two other WBA members - VSNL in India (March 2007) and Telefónica in Spain (February 2007) – to the BT international Wi-Fi network to broaden coverage for subscribers. 

Other companies outside the WBA membership have been added.  Leonidas says, “In some ways it is easier to connect with other WBA members because of the WRIX specifications, but Quiconnect works on a gap analysis for us so that other non-WBA partners live up to these standards and we can easily roam with them too.” 

To this end, further integration work has been completed with Internet Solutions in South Africa (June 2006), Kubi Wireless in Spain (May 2006) and Vex in Latin America (May 2007).

 The benefits

 Through roaming agreements, BT Openzone customers now have access to over 35,000 hotspots around the world at quality locations. Through Quiconnect, new geographical areas like South Africa and Latin America have been added and the scope of existing foreign country coverage has also been bolstered.

The consumer benefit of roaming internationally with BT Openzone, rather than having to buy Wi-Fi access locally through a third party provider, should not be underestimated.  Access is easier and faster using existing BT subscriber accounts or BT’s new International pre-paid vouchers - the BT Openzone 500 Europe and the BT Openzone Americas 500 - which provide 500 minutes of Wi-Fi access in a host of countries in each market. This makes it more convenient for customers so they don’t have to use a credit card abroad, input numbers and security codes then receive a bill later with costs subject to exchange rate fluctuations and so on. Similarly, users benefit from using a service from their home service provider, a brand they know and trust while abroad, with full round the clock help desk support. 

From a technical perspective, Quiconnect has helped facilitate 14 interconnections for BT with foreign telcos and network operators in an 18 month period, and facilitated the commercial negotiation process with new partners. 

From a more tactical IT level, Quiconnect now hosts a number of BT’s landing pages across this burgeoning Wi-Fi network.  Historically, when things required updating, BT used to manage the page revisions with each individual partner which was time consuming.  Working with Quiconnect, however, this process has been simplified so that if there is a new offer to subscribers, new roaming rates or a look or feel change required, BT’s team just upload to Quiconnect’s Interconnect Management Portal and all the changes happen automatically across the various Wi-Fi networks and partners worldwide.

BT is also benefiting from using Quiconnect’s portal-based consolidated reporting tool and hotspot directory to manage user authentication, monitor usage and store RADIUS attributes per partner and user.

Leonidas concludes, “Quiconnect has a good working relationship with BT - we have clear aims and objectives, dates of delivery and we all try to abide by this.  Quiconnect is very flexible in how they approach things so as to provide us a bespoke service.  Interconnecting with other large foreign telcos who have different systems, processes and ways of working is challenging. Quiconnect has helped us navigate around this.”