According to analyses of Syniverse and third-party data, “transient roamers” – those who seek alternatives to traditional mobile roaming – spent more than $17 billion in 2012 on alternative connectivity options while traveling that include purchasing local SIM cards at their destinations and paying for Wi-Fi at hotels, in flight or on other public hotspots.

• Mobile roamers spent the most on hotel Wi-Fi – £5.4 billion – to meet their connectivity needs.
• Outside of the hotel, an additional £2.5 billion was spent purchasing access to other paid Wi-Fi hotspots while an estimated £145 million was spent on in-flight Wi-Fi.
• The purchase of local SIM cards was another popular alternative with £3 billion going toward voice, text and data charges as well as rental fees for SIM cards purchased in visited networks.

When arriving in a foreign destination, end users can quickly become “transient roamers” as they stop to purchase local SIMs at the nearest airline terminal or pay for hotel Wi-Fi. Or those users can become “silent roamers” by greatly diminishing or discontinuing their use of mobile service altogether. In 2012, Syniverse calculated that “silent roamers” represented £700 million in annual missed revenue opportunity for mobile service providers.

Game Changer

Roamware, Inc., the Global Leader in Mobile Operator Service Solutions announced the launch of CloudSIM, a game changing international subscriber identity ecosystem that helps Mobile Operators and MVNOs offer attractive roaming rates to international travelers on their home numbers. In English this potential translates into the ability to virtually purchase local SIM cards / tel numbers for the country you are traveling to. However it will be interesting to see how many networks actually decide to implement this technology…. watch this space.