For years, roaming revenue felt like a declining legacy line item for mobile operators. Regulation squeezed margins, Wi-Fi replaced casual usage, and travellers became far more price-sensitive. That narrative is now shifting again.

New research from Kaleido Intelligence forecasts that combined wholesale and retail roaming revenues generated by consumer mobile users, travel eSIMs, and IoT connections will exceed $60 billion globally by 2030. That represents a 41 percent increase compared to 2025 levels, a significant rebound for a market many had written off as mature.

What makes this forecast notable is not just the size of the number, but where the growth is coming from. This is not a return to old roaming habits. It is a structurally different roaming economy, shaped by 5G usage, travel eSIM adoption, and the rapid expansion of IoT connectivity across borders. eSIM roaming traffic

Data, not voice, is driving the rebound

The core engine behind this growth is data roaming. According to Kaleido’s latest Mobile Roaming Data Hub, global roaming data usage is projected to grow by 140 percent by 2030, reaching more than 20,300 petabytes annually.

This explosion in volume is being driven by two parallel shifts. First, consumers are roaming more freely on 5G networks. Higher speeds and lower latency fundamentally change behaviour. Travellers stream, upload, navigate, and work without the same hesitation that defined earlier LTE roaming experiences.

Second, inbound roaming traffic is rising sharply due to travel eSIM usage. While many travellers assume eSIMs automatically mean local network access, the reality is more nuanced. A substantial share of travel eSIM traffic still terminates via roaming agreements rather than local breakouts, especially for global or regional plans.

For mobile operators, this distinction matters. Roaming termination means inbound wholesale revenue, even when the end user purchased connectivity from an eSIM provider rather than a traditional carrier.

Travel eSIMs are quietly boosting operator revenues

One of the most interesting findings in Kaleido’s research is how clearly travel eSIMs have shifted from being seen as a threat to becoming a demand accelerator for roaming revenues.

Global traveller adoption of travel eSIM packages reached 12 percent in 2025. By 2030, Kaleido expects that figure to more than double to 31 percent. That is not niche behaviour anymore. That is mass adoption among frequent travellers, business users, and digitally confident leisure travellers.

Crucially, the research estimates that attributable wholesale revenues from travel eSIM services will approach $10 billion annually by 2030. That money flows primarily to host network operators whose infrastructure carries the traffic.

This helps explain why many operators have softened their stance toward third-party eSIM brands. Instead of eroding roaming income, travel eSIMs are expanding the total volume of paid connectivity. They bring users who would otherwise rely on airport Wi-Fi, offline maps, or airplane mode.

From an operator’s perspective, a traveller using a travel eSIM is often better than a traveller not using mobile data at all.

IoT roaming is growing even faster

While consumer roaming attracts the headlines, Kaleido’s forecast shows even faster momentum in IoT roaming.

IoT roaming connections are expected to grow at an average annual rate of 18 percent between 2025 and 2030, significantly outpacing the wider cellular IoT market, which is forecast at 11 percent. eSIM roaming traffic

This growth reflects the reality that IoT is inherently cross-border. Connected vehicles, logistics tracking, smart meters, industrial sensors, and asset monitoring rarely stay within national boundaries. As deployments scale globally, roaming becomes unavoidable.

Regulatory pressure and permanent roaming restrictions still exist, but operators are increasingly responding with distributed network architectures, flexible roaming frameworks, and multi-IMSI or eSIM-based solutions designed specifically for IoT.

As Kaleido research author Nitin Bhas notes, roaming remains relevant because it solves complexity. For IoT, consistency and reliability often matter more than marginal cost differences.

Why 5G changes roaming behaviour

5G is not just faster LTE. It changes how people behave when they travel.

With higher speeds and more predictable performance, users are more comfortable relying on mobile data for work tasks, cloud access, video calls, navigation, and real-time services. That leads to longer sessions, heavier usage, and fewer attempts to ration data.

For operators, 5G roaming also improves the economics. Network slicing, better traffic management, and more advanced wholesale agreements allow carriers to monetise quality rather than just volume.

This is particularly relevant as premium travel eSIM plans increasingly differentiate on speed, latency, and reliability, not just price per gigabyte.

Roaming’s comeback looks different this time

It is important to stress that this is not a return to the roaming model of the early 2010s. Back then, revenue growth was driven by bill shock, lack of alternatives, and limited consumer awareness.

Today’s growth is being built on choice, transparency, and new usage patterns. Travel eSIMs compete aggressively on price. Consumers actively select plans before they travel. IoT deployments are engineered with roaming in mind from day one.

This makes the revenue more sustainable. Operators are earning less per megabyte, but from far more megabytes, across far more use cases.

It also explains why wholesale roaming has regained strategic importance for operators, even as retail roaming margins remain under pressure in some regions.

Conclusion: roaming is evolving, not disappearing

Roaming has been declared dead many times. Each time, it has quietly adapted.

What Kaleido’s forecast shows is not a surprise spike, but a structural transformation. Travel eSIMs, IoT connectivity, and 5G usage are reshaping how roaming is consumed and monetised. Instead of being a consumer pain point, roaming is becoming an invisible layer that enables global mobility.

Compared with earlier forecasts from players like GSMA Intelligence, Juniper Research, and Analysys Mason, Kaleido’s numbers stand out for how explicitly they link travel eSIM adoption to wholesale revenue growth. That connection is often overlooked in public debates about disintermediation.

For operators, the message is clear. Fighting travel eSIMs is no longer a winning strategy. Optimising roaming frameworks, improving inbound traffic monetisation, and partnering more intelligently across the ecosystem is where the opportunity lies.

For travellers and businesses, the takeaway is equally important. Global connectivity is becoming simpler, cheaper, and more reliable, not because roaming disappeared, but because it evolved.

And for the travel connectivity market as a whole, roaming’s quiet comeback may turn out to be one of the most underestimated stories of the decade.