T-Mobile UK Becomes First iPass-Billed Operator in Europe

Remote connectivity service provider iPass Inc has announced a deal with T-Mobile in the UK. It will be its first relationship with a European 3G operator where corporate customers can be billed by iPass for connecting to its network from their laptop.

The Redwood Shores, California-based company has been offering cellular connectivity on its software client for some time, and it already has wholesale relationships in which it is responsible for the billing, with two big US vendors in North America.

Last October it added similar relationships with Beijing Unicom in China, KDDI Corp (Berlin: DIP.BE - news) in Japan, and Hutchison Telecoms 3 Hong Kong, but until now all the European cellular connectivity it offered was what it called "Phase 1", a service for which the operator was responsible for the billing. This also meant iPass could not offer a single-bill service because it would still be doing the billing for any WiFi usage by the same corporate customers, and even though the cellular bill was separate, the software client could still be used to make the connection.

The reason for the apparent reluctance of European operators is ownership of the customer, in that they dont want the customer loyalty to be to iPass rather than to them. But against that objection, iPass sets the size of its customer base and the potential for generating traffic on their networks.

The network operators brand identity is still guaranteed because most cellular connections from laptops require the insertion of a data card, so the user is aware of whose network is being used. But this might change because cellular connectivity is increasingly being embedded into laptops, though even then it tends to enable access only to one operators network.

Corporate customers will still face multiple bills for the time being if their employees are using their laptops abroad because the iPass/T-Mobile deal is only good for the UK. So even if the same data card is enabled for international roaming, the bill for the international bit will come from T-Mobile, not iPass. But it is a start, and an important one if iPass is to prosper with its connectivity aggregation model for corporate customers working in Europe. iPass already offers WiFi connectivity on some 8,000 hotspots operated by Deutsche Telekom (Xetra: 555750 - news) across Europe under the T-Com brand in Germany and T-Mobile elsewhere, so there would appear to be the potential to expand the cellular deal with T-Mobile UK to other geographies.

Stephen Dane, iPasss director for the UK and Ireland (IREL.OB - news) , said the company has already begun to offer connectivity beyond corporate laptops. He said its client is already available on the Communicator range of devices from Nokia (Stockholm: NOKI-SDB.ST - news) , enabling it to be used on their WiFi radios. Those devices run Nokias Series 80 UI for the Symbian smart phone OS, and while Dane declined to reveal any specific plans to offer the client on, say, Nokias Eseries enterprise smart phones (which run Series 60 and also offer WiFi connections), he did say iPass's strategy is to extend its offering to more devices.

source news : uk.news.yahoo.com