Telekom Malaysia has signed a new agreement with British Telecoms, which will allow both parties to leverage on each others Wi-Fi network in Malaysia and United Kingdom. Through this agreement with BT, TM’s national Wi-Fi footprint will be included in BT’s Global Wi-Fi roaming hub, and will enable BT’s customers to leverage TM’s Malaysian Wi-Fi estates while roaming in the country and region. TM will also be interconnected with BT’s Global Wi-Fi roaming hub, which allows its end customers to access the full range of global and UK based Wi-Fi capabilities while travelling abroad and in the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, BT’s Global Wi-Fi roaming hub integrates Wi-Fi estates globally to provide mobile and Wi-Fi operators truly global Wi-Fi roaming for their end users. The service removes access and authentication hurdles and allows seamless Wi-Fi roaming embedded in the Mobile Network Operator standard authentication processes this will assist to reduce Capital Expenditure requirements. It will also roll out stand-alone, complementary or converged Wi-Fi roaming (bringing 2G, 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi roaming together) that is simple and easy to manage.
Being part of the hub creates a global Wi-Fi roaming ecosystem that has significant traction in the Asian market, and will be especially attractive to UK and global customers roaming in Malaysia with over 4,600 hotspots locations at airports, hotels, convention centres and cafes. TM users will also gain access to nearly 400,000 hotspots in the UK supporting Wireless Internet Service Provider roaming authentication including 12,000 for both WisPr and Extensible Authentication Protocol authentication to enhance converged roaming offerings to its end customers.
While TM only has fixed line users for now, the likely candidate to maximise the utilisation of this agreement would be P1 the recently acquired mobile network operator. This collaboration will benefit users to use the service in UK when they use BT network while holidaying there and for BT users when they come to Malaysia. There were no pricing mention or mobile plans mentioned at this point of time. PC.com will work on getting more details from this news report.
