How does an organisation join the service? / Terms of Membership

Updated: 6/12/2019

Prerequisites

Participation in eduroam brings great benefits to an organisation and whilst it is not difficult to adapt existing infrastructure and to deploy RADIUS, organisations considering joining the UK eduroam federation should gain a good understanding of the what is involved. Decision makers are recommended to read the eduroam Technical Requirements overview and must read and accept the Terms of Membership below and the eduroam(UK) Policy. Technical staff tasked with implementation should review the Implementation Roadmap and familiarise themselves with the requirements detailed in the Technical Specification. Further information, advice and guidance is freely available for interested parties. Please e-mail or telephone your enquiry to the Jisc Service Desk. To proceed with application, click on link for the Application Form in the section below.

Terms of Membership of eduroam(UK)

i) Organisations proceeding to join eduroam(UK) are deemed to have accepted these terms of membership, eligibility and rules of membership and to have understood the requirements detailed in the documents listed above. (Nb. In applying to join eduroam(UK), applicants place themselves under no time commitment to implement an operational service, although it is suggested that this should be achieved within 6 months of application.)

Eligibility

ii) eduroam(UK) is a federated service managed by Jisc; eligibility of organisations to join eduroam(UK) and participate in providing eduroam services is in general governed by the terms of the Janet Eligibility Policy. However, since the two components of eduroam service (Visited service and Home/IdP service) can be implemented independently and in the case of Home service provision there is granularity which extends to category of user, there are policy refinements which apply based on type of organisation and user so as to accommodate as wide a range of participation as possible.

iii) In essence, membership of eduroam(UK) is available to any organisation belonging to (a) the learning and research community (whether publicly or privately funded; this includes, universities, colleges, UTCs, schools consortiums, academies, private colleges, research council establishments and institutes, museums, learned societies and charities sponsoring education or research) and with certain caveats (b) not-for profit organisations supporting research and education and also (c) other public-sector organisations (including local, central and devolved government and the NHS) in their delivery of public services and other activities for the public good. Any organisation that has access to a Janet IP service is eligible to participate as a Home and Visited provider, a Home-only provider or a Visited-only provider. Organisations without access to a Janet IP service but that meet the general criteria above can also participate as full Home and Visited service members. Furthermore, any organisation with a UK presence, including commercial companies, may participate as a Visited service provider.

iv) Scope of user eligibility:

Organisations falling within the core learning and research community group (a) above, may provide Visited services and may provide Home (IdP) services (ie full roaming-enabled eduroam accounts) to 'all members' and 'registered close associates of the organisation who regularly visit the campus'; temporary visitors such as conference delegates, open day/workshop event attendees, contractors/commercial partners, researchers/lecturers from non-eduroam organisations, museum/gallery visitors etc (ie individuals visiting in connection with/support of the university's primary research/education/learning mission) may be given eduroam accounts strictly for the duration of their visit to the university. Members of the public casually visiting or taking up commercial venue/accommodation services operated by the university are not eligible.

Organisations which fall outside group (a) above, may provide Visited services but Home (IdP) services may at present only be provided to the members of staff who are engaged in or provide support for learning, teaching or research activities. Commercial organisations may provide Visited services but may not provide Home (IdP) services.

v) Nb. There are two important considerations governing to whom eduroam services can be provided - Jisc/Janet services cannot be used to provide communications services to unregistered members of the public and since Janet is publicly-funded, services cannot be used in support of 'economic undertakings' which might result in contravention of State-aid regulations. Also, since eduroam(UK) is part of the global eduroam community there are also concerns regarding the extent of provision of eduroam services beyond the traditional community.

Cost of Membership

vi) At present there is no membership fee for participating in eduroam(UK) in any capacity. This is because eduroam works effectively as a franchise and at the point of service is provided through the co-operative collaboration of member organisations on the basis of mutual benefit. The essential national infrastructure underpinning the service, together with the test and monitoring functions of the Support server, technical support service, technical specification and governance of the eduroam(UK) federation is provided as part of the Janet IP connection service/Jisc subscription. The cost of this infrastructure is not insignificant. Whilst there are no current plans to introduce charges, even for non-Janet IP/Jisc-subscription organisations, Jisc reserves the right to introduce charges in the future.

Rules of Membership

vii) Participation in the eduroam(UK) Federation and use of the eduroam service is subject to the Janet Acceptable Use Policy, the Janet Security Policy, the eduroam(UK) Policy and the eduroam(UK) Data Protection Schedule.

viii) By submitting an application to Jisc to join eduroam(UK), organisations agree that they will bide by the terms of the eduroam Policy(UK) and strictly adhere to the Technical Specification.

ix) It will be deemed that in submitting their application, applicants:

Have sufficient authority within the organisation to submit the application
Declare that the organisation is entitled to use the DNS name requested for use as the user realm name
Accept that Jisc retains the right to review the Policies and the Technical Specification governing the service which are defined by Jisc and that these may evolve over time.

x) Member organisations accept that eduroam(UK) reserves the right to vary these terms of membership, may withdraw service to any member and that eduroam(UK) is subject to the terms of membership of the European eduroam Confederation and consequently may need apply changes agreed at international level.

xi) In applying to join eduroam(UK), organisations accept that they indemnify Jisc, their agents and subcontractors against any and all liability for any claims arising from their use of the service.

Application Form

eduroam is a trust-based network access service federation and all participating organisations must accept the responsibilities associated with issuing user credentials and inter-working with the eduroam(UK) infrastructure. Furthermore, due to the significant investment in effort required from the organisation to set up and to effectively promote eduroam to the organisation's user base to ensure wide take-up, applications can only be accepted from a director or network management contact registered with Jisc Service Desk.

[Individual users do NOT need to separately join the service and should NOT send the application form below - any member of a participating organisation who has a network logon account can use eduroam. Individuals who are not members/on-campus associates of an eligible organisation will not be able to make use of the service.]

Once your organisation has a good understanding of the Implementation Roadmap and is confident it will be able to work towards deployment of a service compliant with the Technical Specification, please complete the >> APPLICATION FORM << on our eduroam(UK) Support Server portal. Please note that a senior management contact, ie network manager or IT director, must complete or endorse this application; please ensure that the appropriate details are included on the application form.

The ‘Welcome Pack’ will be sent to the management and technical contacts registered on the form An induction via telephone is available on request for your technical contact should any guidance be required in using the portal. Nb. the Jisc web site Privacy Policy applies to contact information entered into this form, but your attention is drawn to the following specific terms relating to eduroam(UK).

eduroam(UK) Privacy Notice

eduroam(UK) does not gather any personal information from end users, but various behind the scenes processes and the need to be able to respond to service affecting situations require us from time to time to reach management contacts and/or the technical system administrators at subscribing organisations. The system administrator’s information is needed for us to set up access to the eduroam(UK) management system which enables your organisation to participate in eduroam. We’ll use it, as described in our standard privacy notice (at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice), to provide the service you’ve requested, as well as to identify problems or ways to make the service better. With restricted access, the technical contact's e-mail address will be published on the eduroam(UK) Support web site server where it will only be visible to other logged in Support server users, i.e. eduroam system administrators at other UK member organisations. In addition it will be added to the private and moderated eduroamuk-support jiscmail service announcements, alerts and advisory notices mailing list. We’ll keep the information until we are told that you no longer wish to subscribe or until we are notified that the contacts are no longer performing the defined roles, at which point it will be removed from both the service and Support server systems.

What happens next

Your application will be acknowledged and after a validity check, you should be admitted to the eduroam(UK) federation, an account on eduroam(UK) Support server will be set up for the nominated technical contact and a welcome information pack will be sent to you. The information pack is comprehensive and the Support server provides context-specific help. If additional help in using Support server or if you have any deployment queries you can request a telephone induction to the service for your lead technical contact.

To underpin the service and to support organisations joining and participating in the federationscheme, a comprehensive, fully resourced support structure has been put in place which provides:

Pre-deployment support – planning and selection of RADIUS server hardware and software and supplicant systems
Technical support during implementation
Post-implementation support on technical issues
Dedicated eduroam-support web site for participants only
Dedicated e-mailing list for technical and service announcements
Training courses (chargeable)
Comprehensive technical and promotional documentation
eduroam availability map showing where service is available and site-specific service information

Promotional material templates are available through the eduroam.org web site to help effectively promote eduroam within your organisation and to advertise where eduroam is available on your campus. This material can assist with the following:

General advertisement of the service at campuses
Advertisement of the specific locations at which eduroam is available
Education of staff and student user-base about the benefits and usage of the service

Any problems, comments or suggestions regarding this page, please e-mail the eduroam(UK) Service Manager.