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. top Roaming vendors 

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 By 120% in 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 among 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, BICS, TOMIA and Vodafone Assessed Nr 1 Providers of Roaming Services

Mobileum, BICS, TOMIA and Vodafone have scored the number 1 providers of roaming services across 7 categories covering Steering of Roaming, Sponsored Roaming, Roaming Hubs, IPX, Data & Financial Clearing, Analytics & Value-Added Service and Fraud Management & Security.

Kaleido’s latest Mobile 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

Mikaël Schachne, BICS CMO & VP of Mobility and IoT Business: “We are thankful to Kaleido and the operator community for reaffirming BICS’ market leadership position in Roaming, Fraud, IPX and Analytics. Our focus throughout our solutions is to help operators optimise and protect their business, while generating new revenue streams.”

Sherif Bakir, Director of Vodafone Roaming Services: “Vodafone’s commitment to connecting people for a better future is exemplified by its leadership in roaming technologies and services, and by ensuring the satisfaction of our customers wherever they are.”

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.”

Andrei Elefant, TOMIA CPO: “Being ranked #1 for our Clearing Services and Champions for our Network Services validates the power of our Platform.”

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. Roaming vendors