On 29th November, forty high-level experts and professionals met in Tampere, Finland, to discuss steps to foster interoperability and roaming in the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) ecosystem. In the context of MaaS, roaming is defined as the ability of a MaaS customer to access mobility services in markets other than his/her own, regardless of whether these mobility services are purchased in a package or as individual trips.
The roaming of MaaS, from city to city and across borders, was identified as one of the key elements for the success of MaaS in the White Paper of the MaaS Alliance, published in September 2017. By enabling service roaming, we ensure not only quick scalability but, more importantly, unprecedented usability for the end-users. Given that people already cross European borders with their vehicles, it is important to allow them that same freedom of movement without vehicle ownership. The scope of roaming in mobility services should eventually become global.
The MaaS Summit gathered international high-level experts from the transportation industry, public administrations and academia. In her opening remarks Finnish Minister for Transport and Communication, Mrs Anne Berner highlighted that MaaS is a prominent solution which should be used to tackle the existing challenges of the transport system. Similar roaming issues have been solved in the telecommunication and banking industries and we should learn from their experience, she said. In addition, Mrs Berner emphasized that the active collaboration between public and private sector is significant for the development of roaming. She also highlighted that one of the main components of the roaming ecosystem is trust.
[…]
The MaaS Summit was organized in conjunction with 1st International conference on MaaS (ICoMaaS) in Tampere. This was the 3rd annual MaaS Summit and it was hosted by the MaaS Alliance, in co-operation with the Finnish Ministry of Transport & Communication.
Read the full report from the MaaS Summit here.
