Four large international telcos are testing a blockchain solution to simplify inter-operator roaming agreements.
The operators – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and T-Mobile US – are testing a “production-ready” solution to reduce the complexity involved with inter-operator roaming.
Inter-operator roaming requires drafting, signing, and manually implementing each agreement under the legacy system. The new solution aims to automate the cumbersome process.
Speaking to Mobile Europe, SVP of Deutsche Telekom Rolf Nafziger said:
“The inter-operator workflow in roaming has been basically unchanged for the last 20 years. In the near future, however, new services like NB-IoT, LTE-M or VoLTE and other quality-based services will drastically increase the complexity of inter-operator discount agreements and respective settlements.”
Deutsche Telekom designed the solution but the operator now plans to make it open-source for free use across the industry.
As a secure digital ledger, blockchain technology ensures the inter-operator roaming agreement is stored and cannot be altered.
While blockchain technologies have largely been overhyped in recent years, now we’re beginning to see truly useful deployments.
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