The new trials could deliver instantaneous and frictionless commercial roaming processes between hundreds of mobile operators around the globe.
“This is an exciting step forward towards the digital future, enabling further roaming related use cases and business models. There is a huge amount of potential for blockchain to automate many of the industry’s manual processes, delivering significant benefits for companies and their customers,” said Eran Haggiag, co-founder and executive chairman of Clear.
In the past, roaming partners would annually go through a highly complex and largely manual process to work out what they owe each other for roaming on their respective networks. The trials, facilitated by Clear’s B2B platform, evaluated the technical feasibility of automating this wholesale roaming discount settlement process using blockchain. The process was able to handle a wide range of complex charging models and cut processing times to minutes.
Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier, Telefónica and Vodafone are now looking to work with the wider industry and the GSMA to investigate the potential for an open blockchain ecosystem and consider the future for ongoing financial settlements based on this technology.
