Unveils details of 18 month extensive trial to bring commercial-ready LTE Roaming Service to market
New York (NYSE) & Mumbai (BSE) – February 15th 2013 –Tata Communications Limited, a leading provider of A New World of Communications, today unveils details of its 18-month intensive trial to deliver one of the industry’s first complete LTE Roaming Services to Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Available today following rigorous testing, the LTE Roaming Service is designed to eliminate the interconnection and interworking complexities of global LTE roaming. The experience gained from the trial resulted in a managed service that simplifies global roaming complexity, offering a single interconnect point and facilitating protocol interworking across multiple mobile operators.
With 4G LTE revenues projected to exceed $100bn globally in 2014[i], enabling users to roam in 4G is critical to maximising revenues. Tata Communications’ LTE Roaming Service enables MNOs to fast track their roll-out of LTE roaming in a cost-effective and scalable manner, while creating differentiation in a highly competitive marketplace. The end-to-end managed solution leverages the company’s extensive experience as the largest mobile signalling inter-provider to streamline roaming interconnect arrangements between mobile operators, replacing the need for hundreds of bilateral peer associations with a single centralised robust interconnect point. This simplifies roaming interconnect to deliver a seamless user experience and assure service continuity as mobile operators migrate to 4G.
“Demand for 4G services is set to explode within the next two years, with some providers announcing price plans which are comparable to 3G. To support this, our LTE Roaming Service is already in place to reduce the complexity and risks for MNOs as they move to 4G. This drives efficiencies, allowing MNOs to focus on their core competencies and maximise the revenue opportunities around next-generation networks,” says Jeffrey Bak, Vice President, Product Management – Mobility Services, at Tata Communications.
Tata Communications researchers spent 18 months conducting extensive trials with vendors to understand the complexities of 4G roaming, and the challenges involved in making it work across different vendor Diameter Agent implementations. The team also tested and validated possible migrations scenarios which could arise from 2G / 3G to 4G transitioning, enhancing Tata Communications’ readiness to enable MNOs to deliver a seamless user experience by proactively addressing and managing multi-network issues. The testing allowed Tata Communications to gain the knowledge and operational enhancements required to create a streamlined unified global support framework, allowing MNOs to fast track LTE roaming cost-effectively.
The LTE Roaming Service comprises Tata Communications’ Diameter Signalling eXchange platform to enable roaming authentication and policy control, and IPX Connect for data roaming and transport. The end-to-end managed solution includes flexible QoS, supporting a mix of up to six classes of service, and customer service bundles based on business needs. Together with its established 2G / 3G roaming service, SCCP (Signalling Connection Control Part), Tata Communications provides an all-in-one offer supporting both 2G / 3G and 4G roaming service under one framework. This gives operators a scalable upgrade path to 4G along with the ability to support multiple roaming services across a single managed carrier grade IPX connection. Built on Tata Communications’ own leading global data network, the LTE Roaming Service provides the reach, scale, and reliability for mission-critical operations.
Tata Communications will be discussing key developments in the mobile broadband space at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona February 25th – 28th, 2013. To find out more about these developments and the company’s LTE Roaming Service please visit Tata Communications’ stand: 2B85, located in hall 2.
About Tata Communications
Tata Communications is a leading global provider of a new world of communications. With a leadership position in emerging markets, Tata Communications leverages its advanced solutions capabilities and domain expertise across its global and pan-India network to deliver managed solutions to multi-national enterprises, service providers and Indian consumers.
The Tata Global Network includes one of the most advanced and largest submarine cable networks, a Tier-1 IP network, with connectivity to more than 200 countries and territories across 400 PoPs, and nearly 1 million square feet of data center and collocation space worldwide.
Tata Communications’ depth and breadth of reach in emerging markets includes leadership in Indian enterprise data services, leadership in global international voice, and strategic investments in South Africa (Neotel), Sri Lanka (Tata Communications Lanka Limited) and Nepal (United Telecom Limited)
Tata Communications Limited is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India and its ADRs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: Tata Communications).
Forward-looking and cautionary statements
Certain words and statements in this release concerning Tata Communications and its prospects, and other statements, including those relating to Tata Communications’ expected financial position, business strategy, the future development of Tata Communications’ operations, and the general economy in India, are forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including financial, regulatory and environmental, as well as those relating to industry growth and trend projections, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of Tata Communications, or industry results, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, among others, failure to increase the volume of traffic on Tata Communications’ network; failure to develop new products and services that meet customer demands and generate acceptable margins; failure to successfully complete commercial testing of new technology and information systems to support new products and services, including voice transmission services; failure to stabilize or reduce the rate of price compression on certain of the company’s communications services; failure to integrate strategic acquisitions and changes in government policies or regulations of India and, in particular, changes relating to the administration of Tata Communications’ industry; and, in general, the economic, business and credit conditions in India. Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements, many of which are not in Tata Communications’ control, include, but are not limited to, those risk factors discussed in Tata Communications’ various filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Tata Communications is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements.