Canadian Network in Moves to Improve Roaming Revenues

Starhome has announced a partnership to provide advanced roaming services for international travelers with Rogers AT&T Wireless, the largest Canadian GSM/GPRS wireless carrier. Designed to mimic their home networks, the services allow international roamers to extend their familiar user experience while on the Rogers AT&T network.

The Home Short Code service lets roamers dial habitual short codes for popular home services like customer care, voicemail, or information services while the Global Direct Access service delivers Caller Line Identification (CLI) to provide transparent access to those services.

"We are providing a friendly wireless experience that removes the obstacles that roamers face, such as not knowing the long numbers for their favorite services or their associated passwords, " says Karen Webb, Vice President, Product Management and Marketing Plans, Rogers AT&T. "By improving the user experience, we expect that roamers will be encouraged to make more calls and remain loyal to our superior network while in Canada and on return trips," she adds.

The need to add unfamiliar international access codes and country codes in a foreign country, together with the inaccessibility of their familiar handset phone books (usually only programmed for national dialing) causes travelers to make many dialing mistakes. Data received shows that up to 60% of these calls are not redialed-resulting in significant loss of revenue to wireless carriers and frustrated subscribers. The patent pending Intelligent Call Assistant service solves international numbering plan inconsistencies and transparently completes calls using advanced algorithms to correct misdialed sequences.

According to James M. Smith, Vice President, Engineering, Rogers AT&T, "We had all of the services up and running in under three weeks and noticed substantial increased roamer call completion rates immediately-even before we began promoting the services using the Welcome SMS service. Caller satisfaction and utility of network resources are greatly enhanced."

Regarding the partnership, Jeffrey Katzwer, Director, Sales and Business Development, Starhome, said "This is a win-win-win situation for everyone. Starhome is excited to extend its network presence to North America-now over 40 carriers strong. Rogers AT&T will attract more roamers to their network, provide a superior user experience, and significantly increase roaming revenue. International roamers have transparent access to their favorite home services and need not concern themselves with often-bizarre international dialing rules."

Posted to the site on 13th May 2003