Pan-Asian WLAN Agreement Signed

Five major Asian telecommunication companies have teamed up to form the world's first and largest Wireless Broadband Alliance (WiFi/WLAN). They are Korea Telecom, China Netcom, Malaysia's Maxis, Singapore's StarHub and Australia's Telstra.

With this Alliance, business travellers who need to stay connected to the Internet while away from office and home, will now find it easier to enjoy wireless broadband services in many international airports, major business hubs, hotels, cafes and other locations. As of today, member operators have collectively rolled out wireless broadband services to more than 8,600 locations including 17 international airports in five countries. By the end of this year, wireless hotspots managed by all member operators will expand to over 20,000 locations.

The Alliance is envisioned as a forum to facilitate marketing co-operation between member operators with shared mutual interest in advancing wireless broadband service adoption. Alliance members will team up collectively to offer greater benefits and enhanced experience through differentiated services to the wireless broadband user.

In addition, members will offer special privileges to each others' customers, and explore cross-marketing opportunities that will allow customers to enjoy other telecom and ISP services needed by business travellers. One of the key initiatives that the Alliance will work towards is a commercial and technical solution to facilitate seamless roaming across networks to deliver a uniform and consistent wireless broadband service experience for all operators' customers.

A pilot project to establish inter-operator roaming will be rolled out by the end of July 2003. Once the roaming between Alliance members is fully operational, this will expand customers? choice of location for wireless broadband access to over 20,000 hotspots.

With the rapid proliferation of wireless broadband hotspots around the world, the Alliance is expected to extend its presence to other countries. The Alliance is already in active discussion with other major operators who have expressed interest in joining the Alliance in the near future."

Posted to the site on 25th March 2003