Comfone, provider of roaming services to more than 300 operators in over 130 countries, has added TeliaSonera as the newest member of its WeRoam Wireless IP roaming platform with an aggregated footprint of over 60,000 global hotspots.
As part of the tie-up, TeliaSonera will bring 3,400 hotspots to Comfone WeRoam's network, thereby significantly increasing WeRoam's reach in Scandinavia.
Comfone WeRoam is an open roaming platform that supports username/password and EAP (SIM) certificates based authentication for WLAN Roaming. In the first half of 2009, WeRoam says it recorded a 43% annual increase in WLAN traffic as the market demand for broad WiFi coverage continues to grow. Despite the global economic downturn, fully 80% of Comfone WeRoam traffic in August 2009 was generated by travellers – 72% in hotels and 8% in airports. Combined with a further 12% generated in cafes and restaurants, wireless user trends clearly underscore the critical role that roaming plays for wireless operators.
TeliaSonera's Head of Roaming, Jan Karmakar, commented, "Our customers are continuously increasing their use of mobile broadband and mobile data services both at home and while travelling. Therefore TeliaSonera requires reliable roaming partners like Comfone to substantially increase our access to more wireless hotspots allowing our customers to always be online."
Laurent Freléchoux, Product Marketing Director WeRoam, further explained that with an average WeRoam session time of 47 minutes during the first half of the year, "we are noticing a constant increase in average session time, a clear indication that end users do find value in a WiFi roaming service. Compounded with the roll-out of Comfone's Web Access Portal solution across the footprint, the outlook for traffic growth looks very positive."