The European Commission has approved the proposed acquisition by Syniverse of rival roaming services supplier Mach, subject to the latter selling off several businesses.
Luxembourg-based Mach must offload all its data clearing and near trade roaming data exchange services in the European Economic Area, to satisfy the Competition Commission. Without those conditions, the agency said the €550m acquisition by the US’s Syniverse, first announced back in July 2012, would create a dominant player ‘with virtual monopoly market shares’.
The sell-offs must include not just physical infrastructure but also staff and customers, so they retain business credibility and viability. A range of customer contracts with ‘mid-sized and smaller MNOs’ are also included in the divestment requirements.
Syniverse’s cash offer is designed to boost its scale and revenue potential. Together, the companies will provide a wider range of services to enable carriers to handle roaming agreements and to generate the associated revenues. The development indicates the complexities of roaming in the 4G era, when carriers will need to handle interoperability between a wide variety of IP-based services ‘ and gain revenues from that process.
Syniverse, with its roots in SMS and MMS interworking, has been expanding its activities in LTE and IMS roaming and interoperability. It claims to support 900 operators worldwide, while Mach has 650 customers ‘ these include enterprises and wireline providers as well as the core base of cellcos.
A year ago, Syniverse announced its LTE Hub, which provides a portfolio of 4G roaming services, including customer care, billing, clearing and settlement. This is built around its Prime IPX Network Solution, which connects operators to the firm’s global all-IP network and a suite of 4G solutions. These include Diameter and SIP signalling to support LTE and IMS interworking and roaming, as well as compatibility with legacy networks; real time tracking of all the data travelling over the IPX system, which can be harnessed to optimize the customer experience; clearing and settlement; and interoperability for all kinds of messaging including video and RCS.
However, Syniverse knows it will need even broader capabilities to demonstrate to its customers that it can enable a profitable IP roaming model. Mach’s cloud-based portfolio will bring its new parent additional functions for its hub, even after the divestments, including enhanced real time intelligence capabilities, and extended support for Wi-Fi offload, local break-out and multi-SIM roaming.
The main competitor to the mobile interconnect hub that the combined firm will support is Comfone, but firms with previously narrower scope, such as KPN’s iBasis or Transaction Network Services, are expanding into full roaming ‘ iBasis launched its LTE Signalling Exchange last year, for instance. And there are new approaches emerging, including ‘as a service’ offerings. Recently, wholesale carrier services firm BICS partnered with mobile data services specialist Aicent, to interconnect their IPX communities and support hosted, IP-based interworking and roaming services. The resulting managed network supports mobile data, VoIP and LTE roaming.