Would’t you just love it if all the captive portals just died? Wouldn’t it be great if your mobile devices just connected – securely – to the guest networks without you having to do anything? Just think how great this would be… Not only would it save you money than using cellular/ mobile data especially when your travelling overseas where my carrier can charge over $2 for a MB.

Well Cisco has been working on a project called Open Roaming, for those who know about Eduroam this is very similar but on a bigger scale.

Open roaming will be broken into Access Providers – The people providing the Guest Wi-Fi and the Identify Providers who will do the authentication which could be effectively anyone who is signed up to be an identify provider but not limited to:
Cloud Providers, Service Providers, device Vendors and potentially Enterprises

The authentication process will follow that of 802.11u

If you want to check out the presentation given at Cisco’s Just the Tech by Jerome Henry on the Open Roaming and how the Device Ecosystems project ensures a seamless and consistent Wi-Fi experience check out this video