According to the FCC, the decision means that mobile-phone users traveling outside of their home coverage areas will be able to place calls simply by entering a phone number and pressing "talk" or "send." The FCC extended the new roaming obligation to today's push-to-talk and text-messaging services.

In the current wireless marketplace, the FCC said, "consumers increasingly rely on mobile telephony services and reasonably expect to continue their wireless communications even when they are out of their home network area, and today's decision will provide additional flexibility for consumers."

Data Excluded for Now

The Commission declined to extend its wireless roaming mandate to include the latest broadband data offerings, at least for now. Forrester Research vice president Lisa Pierce said she believes it is very short-sighted to think about the issue primarily from the perspective of voice, because of the importance of mobile data services to more and more businesses.

"When we look at the consumer side, data may or may not be viewed as a luxury," Pierce explained. "But when it comes to businesses, it is becoming essential for employees to be able to do their work out in the field. And it's my guess that at some point the FCC will have to redecide the issue."

A favorable decision on data would be better sooner rather than later, Pierce said. "Because once the horse is out of the barn, making changes can get very complicated and costly." For now, the Commission has merely said it would be willing to receive comments from the public on whether data services should eventually be included under the new rules.

No Immediate Impact

According to the FCC's decision, cellular service providers must provide roaming services to other carriers "on a just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory basis" when the request is made "by a technologically compatible wireless carrier." Regional wireless operators say the new mandate should help them better compete with huge carriers such as Sprint, AT&T , and Verizon.

"Many of the smaller wireless carriers already do have roaming agreements," Pierce said. "It's possible that this will ease their burden to some degree."

The FCC also decided to maintain its existing manual roaming rule, which requires cellular operators to permit handsets tied to other networks to roam manually by having the user supply a credit card number.

Other than changing the relationship between the carriers, the new FCC rules will not affect cellular subscribers today, Pierce noted. However, the Commission's decision to leave it up to the marketplace to set roaming prices might eventually have an impact on consumers' wallets.

Pierce added that because the FCC's mandate is limited to allowing roaming over compatible networks, its impact will be limited. On the other hand, she said, trying to make roaming a universal obligation is impractical.

"If you are talking about intercarrier roaming between GSM and CDMA, it's no walk in the park, and the costs would be prohibitive," Pierce explained. "If only we could wind back the clock by 15 years, it would have been great for cellular users in the U.S. if the FCC had made this sort of decision way back then."