2012 will see the start of major changes to the traditional roaming environment. So says roaming specialist Starhome, which believes that rapid technological progress within the industry is creating a new multi-network environment which will change roaming as we know it.

Starhome notes that new technologies and usage patterns have sky rocketed in the last few years, causing an unprecedented demand on networks.To accommodate these new demands, mobile network operators are turning their attention and resources to invest in Long Term Evolution (LTE), to cope with the demand for extra bandwidth. The increasing use of smart devices, mobile applications and content, as well as the snowballing development of M2M (machine-to-machine) devices will all influence operator’s decisions to be a part of the expanding multi-network roaming environment.

The company says that solutions and services will need to be LTE-ready to enable subscribers to roam in ‘islands’ of LTE within 3G and wi-fi networks. For instance, when a 3G roamer passes through an LTE network, a fallback procedure for 3G phones would be triggered to ensure service is maintained. To support this multi-network mobility, says Starhome, operators will require innovative, intelligent solutions that can dynamically adapt and react to the ever-changing environment, to raise the revenue bar, and maintain subscriber satisfaction.

“Multi-network mobility will open new opportunities and new challenges for industry players,” says Starhome co-founder and COO, Shlomo Wolfman. “Legacy off-the-shelf products are no longer sufficient to meet the expanding mobile environment and increase operator revenues. Business management tools including decision-making solutions with massive integrated data analytics will become the tool of choice to combine with products already provided to the industry.”

Wolfman adds that multi-network challenges are further complicated by the current industry trends, including regulations, data usage, bill shock and operator’s attempts to instil “fearless roaming” in their subscribers. The company concludes that operators will need solutions for multi-networks that will work as they should, when they should, to gain the competitive edge in this emerging environment.