Several of Europe`s largest telecom companies, including Vodafone, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom, announced that blockchain technology will be utilized in order to provide roaming settlements. Under the standard business operations of the telecoms, there will be taxes that each of the companies owns to their rivals on an annual basis, and the process involves a significant amount of manual work. The blockchain technology is expected to streamline the settlements, making settlement completions almost instant.
The blockchain that the telecom giants will rely on is developed by the fintech company Clear. After the end of the initial tests, Clear stated that their platform handles a wide range of complex charging models, reducing settlements time to just a few minutes.
“The move towards blockchain-based settlements is a giant leap into the digital future. The technology enables new business models and business cases to be developed. The blockchain possesses a vast amount of potential for eliminating cumbersome manual processing, process automation, and benefits for telecoms and their users”, Eran Haggiag, co-founder of Clear stated.
The platform relies on Hyperledger Fabric – a joint project, hosted by the Linux foundation. This way, if the platform is adopted, there will be no need for special coding language learning curve for new entities.
In the world of the modern economy, telecommunication giants have vast amounts of roaming partnerships with other mobile operators, creating a challenging scene for roaming settlements. Deutsche Telekom’s Head of Commercial Roaming R&D, Frederico Homberg, recently disclosed that the number of wholesale roaming partners exceeds 600.
“The blockchain solution is a must when we speak about added value. Boosting the process efficiency, while providing transparency and security is a great feature. It depends on how many carriers are onboarding such platform – this is the key to generating the “network effect,” Homberg added.
The three telecom giants are also looking into partnerships with the GSMA and the industry behind it. The goal – to create an open blockchain ecosystem and future financial settlements made via blockchain technology.
Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone were involved in other blockchain projects in the past. The German operator established Innovations Labs – a project that involves specialists working on personal data security and enabling single ID verification for numerous blockchain based services. Vodafone entered the blockchain race as a founding member of Facebook’s Libra stablecoin project. Vodafone has been and continues to be in charge of overseeing the development and governance of the project.