Publisher's Synopsis
Special issue on Next Generation Roaming Applications: Implementation Challenges for Rich Communication Suite Applications, Locations & Presence Based Services and NFC for Roaming Scenarios in Heterogeneous Networks Roaming is an important aspect in mobile communication that renders the ability to operate the mobile device beyond the fences. A few years back, Voice, SMS and GPRS were the primal drivers to facilitate roaming. But with the advent of the smartphones, the recent trend is to render the Value Added Services and the applications with the same look and feel in all roaming net- works as being at home. This implies that the roaming brokers should not only act as carriers for providing the basic services (Voice/SMS/GPRS), but they should also be able to cater the plethora of VAS and Rich Communication Suite (RCS) applications which are the game changers. The evolution of the state of the art mobile network is propelled by the requirements of the next generation users where interoperability, security, service continuity, seamless operations in ubiquitous network domains and policy enforcement are some of the important factors. To cater these demands, especially in light of the roaming paradigm, the service providers face some challenges: - Guarantee bandwidth for the mobile user - Allow the mobile terminal to operate ubiquitously across various ac- cess methods (LTE/GSM/WiFi/CDMA/WIMAX) and to manage the authentication and mobility at the core network layer - Simplification of roaming access and management
