Mobile roaming will generate nearly $90 billion in revenue for the world's mobile operators by 2018, representing 8% of billed revenues, according to Juniper Research.
Much of the growth in roaming revenue is expected to be stimulated by demand for data roaming, Juniper said in a new report, which will itself improve thanks to the steady reduction in roaming charges. Data roaming is expected to generate over $42 billion in operator revenues by 2018.
By comparison, Juniper expects roaming revenues to reach $57 billion this year, with data roaming contributing 36% of this total.
But the report also warns that there is an increasing population of 'silent roamers', which do not roam, or are careful to avoid voice or data services while roaming.
“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,” report author Nitin Bhas said.
Converting these silent roamers would potentially improve operators' capacity for revenue expansion while also lifting customer satisfaction.
Transparent, package based pricing is meanwhile key to converting non-data roamers to data roamers as the LTE evolution gains pace, the report adds.