Roaming IoT to challenge mobile network operators, says survey

Market news | March 22, 2017

By Rich Pell

Wireless Communications Wearables

The 6-week survey, responded by Mobile Network Operators globally, was conducted by ROCCO during February and March 2017 to understand how Roaming IoT, or M2M Roaming as it was called in the past, impacts roaming processes, how much revenue are MNOs seeing today and how much should they expect from the future.

73 MNO respondents provided confidential data from the perspective of 6 MNO Groups, making 96 Operators in 81 Countries the sample for this research. The respondents analysed the attractiveness of Roaming IoT traffic and their revenue expectations for inbound as well as for outbound roaming. The MNOs also explained the challenges they face with both incoming and outgoing IoT traffic.

“The results indicate that by 2020 as much as 50% of the roaming revenues may come from IoT with emphasis on inbound rather than outbound roaming. It suggests that there are high expectations on Roaming IoT traffic” stated Gerrit Jan Konijnenberg, CEO of UROS.

“However, over 60% of MNOs said they had concerns about permanent roaming”, the CEO added, before emphasizing his company’s Roaming IoT platform solution to help MNOs monitor bill shock and provide reliable support to roaming scenarios for enterprises.

With this survey MNOs reported their most serious issue related to inbound Roaming IoT is around the amount of traffic permanently roaming. And conversely, the biggest concern in outbound traffic is the willingness of roaming partners to open their network to Roaming IoT, and then secondly the price they want to charge.

“MNOs are clearly making progress with dealing with the Roaming IoT challenges but more support and standardisation is needed”, says Jason Bryan CEO of ROCCO.

The report is available for download from UROS.

Visit UROS at uros.com
Visit ROCCO at www.roamingconsulting.com