Clearwire Communications signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Japan’s UQ Communications and Russia’s Yota to identify objectives and activities towards realization of establishing roaming between WiMAX operators.

The three WiMAX operators will collaborate on business and technical aspects of their respective operation towards making international roaming on WiMAX platform a reality. The trio will also ensure that devices too support such roaming services.

Furthermore the alliance will rope in other members of Clearwire’s Global Alliance Partner Program to forge roaming agreements in as many countries as possible.

They will also make use of WiMAX Forum’s roaming guidelines.

"Today`s announcement confirms mobile WiMAX technology`s maturity and robustness and reaffirms that it is the only commercially available 4G standard worldwide with an available ecosystem of infrastructure and devices," said Barry West, president of Clearwire International. "With over 500 WiMAX deployments underway in about 145 countries, the existence of a roaming framework - helping to connect operators as well as WiMAX customers - is vital to advanced cross-market cooperation."

"The mobile WiMAX position in the telecom market is currently so strong, that operators are taking action to organize a civilized roaming environment," says Dennis Sverdlov, CEO of Yota. "The trilateral MOU, signed by the leading global WiMAX operators, is evidence of that. We are committed to making telecom services easy to use for our clients, and this MOU was signed with their interests in mind."

"WiMAX is a worldwide technology standard available in many countries, which is already giving birth to a variety of new services and end user devices," remarked Takashi Tanaka, president of UQ Communications Inc. "As a global standard, international roaming is a natural service evolution, and we, as WiMAX operators, have to work closely together to make roaming services available as quickly as possible."

YTL Communications of Malaysia, wi-tribe of Pakistan, Vee Telecom of Taiwan, and Global Mobile of Taiwan will also be part of the initiative.