The folks at Juniper Research shared with MMW a new report this week that values operator revenues generated from mobile roaming at nearly $90 billion by 2018.
That’s a considerable jump when compared to $57 billion this year.
If the envisioned numbers manifest, this will represent over 8% of the global operator billed revenues by 2018.
The report notes that these revenues will largely be driven by increasing data usage, primarily from a reduction in roaming charges. Data roaming represented an estimated 36% of the global mobile roaming revenues in 2013.
However, the new report also observed that with increasing global travel, there is an increasing prevalence of “silent roamers.” Silent roamers exercise caution, or do not use voice and data services at all while roaming, and represent a non-user segment. This behavior presents a huge challenge to operators both in terms of customer satisfaction and revenue expansion.
“This is costing the industry billions each year in lost revenue opportunity, given the millions of inbound and outbound roamers as well as the expansion of data traffic over flattening voice usage,” says report author Nitin Bhas.
