Telstra has been developing a temporary disaster roaming (TDR) solution with the government, TPG Telecom and Optus since March 2020. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had urged the carriers to enable this capability.
In November 2020, Telstra announced that it would conduct a test of TDR in its 5G innovation centre on the Gold Coast. The test took place earlier this week.
The test procedure was described by Telstra as follows: A device on a mock network was used to simulate a network outage caused by a disaster. Then, the temporary disaster roaming functionality was simulated, which enabled the device to switch to Telstra’s network and establish a connection.
According to a Telstra spokesperson, the other carriers had participated in the development of the solution. The spokesperson also said that the results would be shared with the other carriers and the government as part of their ongoing discussions.
Test involved the Telstra 4G network accepting the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) code broadcast
The test involved the Telstra 4G network accepting the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) code broadcast by the device. The PLMN code is a five- or six-digit code that identifies the country and the mobile network of the device.
However, implementing temporary roaming is not simple.The carriers need to broadcast a unique network code for the sites affected by a natural disaster.
The network receiving this TDR network code would check if the customer’s network were absent, and if so, devices would connect to whichever TDR network is available and activated.
This requires prior agreements between the carriers, similar to international roaming.The simulation was a “critical first step” to demonstrate the feasibility of temporary disaster roaming, according to Channa Seneviratne, the executive of network technology development and solutions.
He said that they would collaborate with other network providers and the government to explore how to implement the temporary disaster roaming and develop an industry solution.