London, April 1st, 2026: New research from Kaleido Intelligence provides an analysis of the growing role and impact of artificial intelligence across the roaming value chain, based on operator survey insights and vendor input.
Kaleido’s research examines where AI is currently being deployed, which use cases are being prioritised, and the business value operators expect to achieve. The report also details short-term investment plans for roaming business units, highlighting industry areas that were priorities for investment.
To inform this report, Kaleido interviewed 35+ vendors across 10 product domains and conducted its Wholesale Roaming 2026 MNO Survey*, drawing on over 50 MNOs and building a substantive understanding of the impact AI has had across roaming.
For MNOs, analytics, real-time quality management, and roaming steering are emerging as key innovation priorities. These are among the six domains assessed in Kaleido’s AI in Roaming 2026 report, which evaluates AI’s impact across each.
Roaming product domains where respondents believed the most roaming innovation was required (in terms of service offerings):
Source: Kaleido Intelligence Wholesale Roaming MNO Survey, H1 2025
Measuring the Impact of AI Across Roaming Domains:
From a technical standpoint, MNOs consistently rank Analytics & Quality Management as top priorities for innovation, driven largely by the growing complexity of roaming
Kaleido’s AI in Roaming 2026 report found that this domain has been most transformed by AI utilisation, partly due to the natural alignment between AI capabilities and the demands of the modern roaming environment. Real-time monitoring and predictive analytics are becoming ever more crucial to manage traffic growing in both volume and complexity, and to ensure consistent QoS.
The success of AI adoption in Analytics & QoS stands in contrast to Roaming Testing, which remains comparatively less transformed. While AI has improved efficiency and reduced the need for manual effort, it has yet to significantly reshape how testing is conducted. This is likely to change, however, as more autonomous AI-driven testing capabilities begin to emerge, expanding AI’s impact in this domain.
Measuring the Business Impact of AI in Roaming: What business value do you expect AI to deliver in roaming operations?
Source: Kaleido Intelligence Wholesale Roaming MNO Survey, Q1 2026*
This varying success matches operator expectations fairly closely – most operators (66%) expect to see QoE improvements due to the strides in problem-solving efficiency AI adoption can offer. However, perceived value is not uniform – operators are less convinced of AI’s role in areas such as compliance risk reduction.
The Strengths of AI and its Varying Application
To more effectively inform investment considerations, Kaleido’s The Impact of AI in Roaming separates efficiency improvements and straightforward operational enhancements from transformative change.
A strength of AI utilisation is that regardless of the application, AI brings several core capabilities which assist in reducing manual effort through automation, and assist in faster, more actionable decision-making (particularly through predictive capabilities).
While these enhancements are valuable, these benefits do not translate equally across all domains. For example, AI currently offers more immediate and practical benefits in Analytics and Quality of Service Management than in Clearing & Settlement, where its role is more focused on efficiency gains than fundamental change.
The graph below shows that operational need is driving AI adoption across the roaming landscape, and that while AI is expanding across the entire roaming value chain, its adoption is notably higher in domains most in need of real-time and predictive capabilities.
Measuring Implementation Strategies for AI in Roaming: In which roaming domain is your organisation currently using or planning to use AI?
Source: Kaleido Intelligence Wholesale Roaming MNO Survey, Q1 2026*
In this report, impact is only considered to be truly significant if AI use cases have transformed the way a process works – for example, the introduction of dynamic automation into steering of roaming is more than just an efficiency improvement: adaptive steering introduces an entirely new dimension of flexibility to steering policies, completely changing the way in which they are applied. This way, operators can more easily understand the operational impact that AI investments may have and can more easily decide what to prioritise when upgrading their solutions.
The Impact of AI in Roaming
Key Findings:
- AI adoption in Clearing & Settlement is expected to grow steadily, particularly to accelerate dispute management and improve overall process efficiency. 80% of respondents identified dispute resolution cycle time, alongside settlement accuracy, as key metrics for measuring impact.
- Roaming margin improvement and revenue uplift were identified as the most critical KPIs for operators evaluating AI in Steering of Roaming. 60% of respondents indicated they would use these metrics to measure AI’s impact.
- Despite the notable impact of AI on Signalling Security, only 14% of operators believed that AI would deliver value in improved security.
Access Kaleido’s AI in Roaming 2026 research for an evaluation of how AI is transforming roaming operations, which highlights where it is delivering the most value today, where its impact remains incremental, and how its role is expected to evolve as networks become more complex.
As AI tools evolve and proliferate across various areas of the roaming landscape, it is crucial to understand the advantages of their use, and where to best make use of their strengths to grow and improve roaming operations.
Download our latest Quality of Service in Roaming: The Role of AI in Steering and Optimisation White Paper.
*Research Note: The research includes findings from Kaleido’s Wholesale Roaming 2026 MNO Survey and draws on responses from 50+ MNOs globally, collected during February–March. The survey remains open, and final results may differ slightly as additional responses are received. The study will close once participation exceeds 70 MNOs.
For further details or to take part in the survey, please contact the analyst team at [email protected].
Request a report or research demo with our product team: [email protected].
Blog Author: Max Holden (Market Research Analyst)