Roaming: the missing piece to the smartphone-Wi-Fi puzzle

We have written a lot about the new generation of hotspots coming out this year that will make it snap for your smartphone to connect seamlessly to your mobile operator’s Wi-Fi hotspots. But what about hotspots that your carrier doesn’t manage?

It turns out the world of Wi-Fi roaming is a whole new bag of problems — problems global wireless standards bodies vowed on to solve. If Wi-Fi is really to going to be going to be a key component of mobile broadband networks, operators need to figure out how to get dozens if not hundreds of disparate Wi-Fi networks to interoperate. Otherwise operators won’t be able to take advantage of the tremendous economies of scale gained by sharing Wi-Fi infrastructure. The GSM Association and the Wireless Broadband Alliance are trying to tackle that issue by merging the mobile and Wi-Fi industries’ two roaming frameworks.