iPass, a service aggregator, will serve as a clearinghouse. iPass said today that Sprint PCS is its first customer for a new service that will settle billing among carriers and offer them access to the more than 2,500 Wi-Fi hotspots for which iPass now resells service.

"Sprint approached us and said, it'd be great if we could access those [2,500] hot spots without having to make individual relationships with each owner," said Jon Russo, vice president of marketing for iPass.

iPass will collect information about how much time each Sprint PCS customer spends connected to a hotspot operated by IPass partners, such as Cometa and Wayport, and handle accounting so that the operators can clear charges among each other. Sprint PCS customers will see these charges on their cellular bill. (Sprint PCS recently launched its hot spot service, and at the time and more recently said they would integrate cellular billing later in the year. Sprint hasn't set a fixed fee for unlimited use.)

Fee settlement has been an issue for major hot spot operators and the companies they are reselling to because until iPass's program each party had to negotiate separate agreements and establish account conduits among their various authentication and billing systems. In all cases, the goal is present a single bill to the customer, or add on service to an existing bill.

The iPass system allows any carrier to access the 2,500 locations they've aggregated at certain wholesale rates, or to establish direct roaming agreements with settlement across any WISP that has signed up with iPass for that particular service. Many WISPs will be part of iPass's virtual network and available for direct resale. iPass won't cut checks; they'll just handle the numbers.

WISPs that participate in iPass's virtual network or direct roaming have to offer a standard authentication method according to iPass's specification. This makes it much, much easier for a software client, such as iPassConnect, to handle multiple networks without customization. iPass will offer to customize their software for carriers -- and, in fact, the Sprint PCS Wi-Fi application has iPass under the hood, as Glenn discovered when he attempted to uninstall it and install iPassConnect 3.

iPass hopes services like this one will encourage roaming programs. "This initiative will help open up roaming. It makes it appealing for those who chose to go the closed route. They might think twice about it now because it'll be easier and quicker," Russo said. [by Nancy Gohring with Glenn Fleishman]