Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), through its subsidiary ePLDT, has expanded its wireless broadband roaming coverage to Malaysia, Singapore, Hongkong , the U.S. and Japan after respective roaming deals with operators in these countries.

EPLDT said in a statement that it has sealed roaming deals with Maxis Malaysia, Starhub (Singapore), Hongkong CSL, T-Mobile USA and NTT Communications (Japan). Roaming arrangements with Korea Telecom and True Thailand are also in the pipeline.

EPLDT expects these deals to give its Wi-Fi subscribers access at around 18,700 hotspot locations from selected Southeast Asian countries and North America.

The company expects to further expand its roaming coverage abroad through its membership in the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), a global consortium of service providers that operate around 35,000 wireless hotspots worldwide.

Formed in March 2003, the WBA is one of the pioneers in Wi-Fi/WLAN services collaboration and is focused on improving five key areas for wireless broadband consumers: global coverage, confidence in quality, reliability, true mobility and good customer experience.

Participating WBA members include British Telecom, China Netcom, Telecom Italia, True Thailand, Swisscom and Orange, among others.

"The WBA continues to broaden the appeal of wireless broadband by linking member networks together, enabling seamless roaming and ensuring that a consistent user experience is reflected throughout the world," said Kyong Yu, chairman of the WBA.

Work has also started towards integrating the WBA members" mobile and fixed networks into the wireless broadband networks so that users have more choices in the number of networks they can access to remain connected, Yu added.

Meanwhile, ePLDT president Ray Espinosa expects ePLDT"s membership in the WBA to benefit local users in terms of allowing local users to stay connected in as many locations abroad.

"Our vision is for our country to be recognized as one of Asia "s fastest-growing Wi-Fi-intensive markets by year-end. This encourages other WBA members to partner with us in providing international roaming from their country to ours, and vice versa", Espinosa said.

EPLDT customers wishing to log in at an international WBA location must first launch their browser, after which they will be presented a WBA members" roaming login page. Subscribers must click on/select the "roaming" link and then select ePLDT from the list of roaming partners. When prompted, they must enter their ePLDT user name and password.