Prepaid wireless customers to benefit from real-time nationwide roaming

Rural Cellular Corp. (Alexandria, MN) has signed an agreement with National Telemanagement Corp. (NTC; Dallas) for NTC's iRoam service, which provides seamless nationwide roaming and other key benefits to RCC's Smartpay Wireless prepaid subscribers in 14 states. NTC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Illuminet Holdings Inc. (Lacey, WA), a provider of advanced nationwide signaling and intelligent network services to the communications industry.

"The integration of iRoam into our prepaid service offers tremendous benefits to our prepaid customers, including local customer care and nationwide roaming from inside or outside their home network with single stage dialing," said Richard Ekstrand, President and CEO of RCC. "The experience will be much more similar to post-pay wireless calling services than anything previously available in prepaid. This is a step toward breaking down barriers for customers who prefer the prepaid billing format."

The iRoam solution was developed by NTC and Illuminet using Intelligent Network software from Lucent Technologies. iRoam is a next-generation global solution that uses current American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) SS7 standards. It operates in both pre- and post-Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN) environments and also supports SS7-based messaging. iRoam affords wireless carriers greater efficiency and cost
control. It allows their prepaid customers the ability to place and receive calls virtually anywhere in the country.

iRoam adds to NTC's existing real-time offerings, including prepaid services on the SmartPay Wireless billing platform, and alternate billing for calls originating from unregistered wireless
phones via the American Roaming Network.

Edited by Ellen Jensen
Managing Editor, Wireless Networks Online