Roaming is one of the most lucrative mobile industry business segments, yet it is also one of the most under-used.
In a report on global roaming, UK research firm Informa estimates that just 13% of all mobile customers worldwide used roaming last year. By 2013 it predicts this will rise to just 17%.
"[T]he market is far from saturated and roaming is in some senses an emerging market," it observes.
Operators are looking to third party service providers with hubs that span much of the world to expand the market - and meet regulatory requirements in Europe - while keeping costs down.
The Informa report, to be published in late July, says Europeans roam the most: the report predicted 31% of European subscribers would use their phone abroad her country in 2008, compared to 5% from Asia-Pacific and 18% from North America.
It's certainly a message that mobile roaming platform providers keen to push.
Mathias Prüssing, the CEO of Switzerland-based Comfone, states, "If every operator had a roaming relationship with every country, the market would be huge, but at the moment, they typically only have bi-lateral agreements with affiliates on what they believe are the most important routes, such a between Europe and US. There are between 50 and 100 countries with none or few roaming agreements in place."
He continues, "The market has changed in the last year. Operators are very focused on how they can increase their revenue. It is just not feasible for every operator to negotiate a bilateral agreement with one or more operators in every other country, but operators don't have to outsource everything - they can mix and match what they want to handle in-house and what they want to use hubbing for.
"For mature operators hubbing is a cost-effective way of establishing roaming relationships with new countries, thereby increasing the volume of calls involved and revenue, while controlling costs. For tier 2 and 3 operators, MVNOs and start-ups, it means they don't need capex upfront."
This approach is about more than just setting up roaming agreements with new territories. Prüssing says, "The provision of roaming services is moving away from the basics of data clearance, financial clearance and signalling. They have become commoditized and therefore have limited growth potential. We need to move up the value chain and hubbing is the way to do that because it offers operators the benefits of scale.
"In the next three to five years, we expect roaming to increase in value by more than 100% and traffic to grow by 20% to 30% a year - and that's just us. We can develop a huge business case from the current situation if we offer operators the right mix of services."