London, February 2nd, 2020 – New research from leading roaming research experts Kaleido Intelligence predicts that global same-day and overnight international travel trips will reach 830 million in 2021, before exceeding pre-COVID-19 levels in 2024.
Following the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, international travel trips fell by 73% in 2020, leading to over 1.5 billion fewer trips worldwide. With overall prospects for a travel recovery in 2021 remaining low, any increased activity is expected only from Q3 2021.
Hope for Operators as Roaming Revenues Predicted to Rise 2022, Driven by Data Traffic Growth
Kaleido Intelligence’s Roaming Data Hub – Q4 2020 research found that the Coronavirus impact on travel resulted in a decline of consumer roaming revenues by 64% in 2020, with Asia-Pacific and Europe witnessing the greatest level of depreciation amongst global regions. In comparison, IoT roaming revenues continued to grow in 2020, driven by existing IoT roaming devices.
However, as travel recovery begins, inbound and outbound roaming revenues from consumer and IoT connections will grow 120% from 2020 to exceed $33 billion in 2022.
Nitin Bhas, Chief of Strategy & Insights at Kaleido Intelligence added: “With retail and wholesale roaming revenues being significantly impacted, these are testing times for operators around the world. MNOs continue to work on necessary steps to protect roaming revenues in the short and medium-term by renegotiating wholesale agreements or focusing on new IoT services. Nonetheless, long-term prospects stay unimpacted with roaming data traffic predicted to match 2019 levels by 2022”.
Kaleido forecasts that consumer mobile and IoT data roaming traffic will exceed pre-COVID-19 levels as early as 2022. Traffic will witness an average annual growth of 41% over the next four years to exceed 2,200 Petabytes in 2025.
Mobileum Assessed as Number 1 Provider of Roaming Services
Mobileum was scored the number 1 provider of roaming services for Steering of Roaming, Fraud Management & Security.
Kaleido’s latest ROAMING VENDOR HUB – H1 2021 – analysed 37 leading roaming vendors. The scoring methodology focused on categorising vendors according to their product leadership, unique market positioning, problem-solving capabilities, innovation leadership and finally, how vendors are positioned to meet critical operator needs and requirements.
Quotes from No 1 Ranked Roaming Vendors
Kishore Vangipuram, Mobileum Head of Roaming: “This award recognises our market-leading solutions for Steering of Roaming, Analytics and Fraud and Security Management, highlighting our unique capabilities to address emerging roaming opportunities and to protect operators’ revenue streams.”
14 of the 37 companies achieved a Champion Vendor status across one or more of the seven service categories, demonstrating a leading product range and the highest quality of service to enable operator success. A further 8 companies achieved a High Flyer vendor status, recognising their high-quality roaming solutions.
The Number 1 and Champion vendors across key product segments as scored by Kaleido Intelligence are below.
Jon King, Chief Commercial Officer at Kaleido, commented: “Kaleido’s impartial approach towards competitive analysis enables roaming vendors to showcase their strengths on an equal playing field. Based on their product strengths and innovation, our expert analysts have grouped leading roaming vendors as Champions and High Flyers to assist operators in vendor selection with clarity and transparency.”
The leadership scoring analysis for 37 roaming vendors is summarised in Kaleido’s ROAMING VENDOR HUB – H1 2021 report, along with an impartial assessment of company strengths and opportunities.