By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Many Wi-Fi professionals have heard about OpenRoaming but only few know how the initiative actually works, perhaps because information thus far has been mostly available as hard-to-read technical specifications. A new paper by Enea maps out everything you need to know about OpenRoaming in an easily accessible format for the first time. Enea’s Johan Terve – the report’s author – says OpenRoaming is simply ‘a revolution in connectivity.’
Imagine connecting to excellent and secure Wi-Fi services all over the world at perhaps hundreds of millions of venues without having to touch or configure your phone to connect to a local Wi-Fi network. That’s the vision of the Wireless Broadband Alliance‘s OpenRoaming initiative, which was launched in May 2020 and now has grown to be available at more than 3 million Wi-Fi hotspots in record time.
Johan Terve, Senior Director of Marketing at Enea, says OpenRoaming is ‘a revolution in connectivity’ and ‘a game changer’ for Wi-Fi and for the deployment of the Passpoint protocol. “For the first time there is an industry-wide initiative that allows Wi-Fi roaming to happen as seamlessly and securely as cellular roaming. More than that, OpenRoaming includes all the features and flexibility that Wi-Fi venues and identity providers need,” Johan Terve says.
A new and highly recommended paper – written by Johan Terve – presents everything you need to know about OpenRoaming. Although OpenRoaming is based on known and standardised technology, its architecture does require study and not least advocacy in order for global adoption. No doubt Enea has done the Wi-Fi industry a big favour by presenting the intricacies of OpenRoaming transparently.
“The strengths of OpenRoaming are many. First of all, it is a federation of ‘access network providers’ (ANPs) and ‘identity providers’ (IDPs) – and it allows roaming between organisations that don’t know each other. The ‘Open’ in ‘OpenRoaming means that most Wi-Fi networks can become ANPs and any organisation with user accounts can become IDPs. But’Open’ does not mean roaming without control, quite the contrary,” says Johan Terve.
Enea has been providing market-leading Wi-Fi service management platforms for two decades and is a contributing member of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, the organisation managing and creating the OpenRoaming standard.
For more download Enea’s “All You Need to Know About OpenRoaming” paper at this link.
/Claus.
