“Kaleido’s latest roaming data hub research identifies the $1.5B silent roamer market as the key to retail growth. Discover our roadmap to combat travel eSIM churn and monetise 5G SA.”
The 2026 travel landscape is navigating strategic crossroads, driven by the friction between a more cautious global economy and the accelerating shift toward digital-integrated travel experiences. Travellers are no longer willing to sacrifice their budgets for convenience; instead, they are gravitating toward flexible, eSIM-driven solutions. But what does this mean for traditional operators and roaming revenue streams?
Effectively, they are facing significant challenges to their conventional roaming revenue streams as “bill shock” becomes a relic of the past.
The Resurgence of Global Mobility
Building on the strong momentum of 2024 and 2025, the international tourism sector has shown remarkable resilience. But which countries are leading the pack in 2026? While the global economy is still in a slow inflation recovery, regions like South Asia and Southeast Asia are emerging as powerhouses. India is projected to see 6.6% growth, while Vietnam has become the fastest-growing economy in the Asia-Pacific region.
What is actually driving these travellers? We are seeing the rise of “Whycations,” trips with a deep personal purpose and “Hushpitality,” where travellers seek quiet, low-stimulus escapes to secondary cities to avoid “overtourism.” Find out more from our latest travel survey report.
For these intentional travellers, staying connected isn’t just a luxury; it’s an essential tool for navigating off-the-beaten-path destinations. Thus, makes the cost-effectiveness of Travel eSIMs even more critical for the modern budget-conscious nomad.
The eSIM Tipping Point: From Niche to Necessity
The eSIM market has officially moved beyond a niche feature to become a global standard. By 2025, 60% of all smartphone sales were eSIM-compatible, and today we see over 3 billion connections powered by this technology.
The strategic shift toward convenience over complexity has forced MNOs to engage with specialised eSIM entrants at the critical nexus of the digital-first consumer experience. In high-growth markets such as China and India, where 27% and 22% of travellers, respectively, have already migrated to digital-first roaming alternatives, the traditional roaming model faces an urgent structural threat. This trend signals a broader market realignment, where MNOs must urgently evolve their retail offerings to mitigate the continued erosion of outbound revenues.
For MVNOs, this technology has moved from a niche feature to a core strategic asset, allowing them to reduce operational costs and unlock new business models in an era of economic recovery. For more information on the impact of travel eSIMs in the roaming sector, visit this link.
The IoT Roaming Frontier: Cellular IoT and SGP.32 Standards
According to Kaleido’s latest Roaming Data Hub, the overall cellular IoT market by the end of 2025 reached 4.1 billion connections, adding 1 billion connections over the last 2 years and averaging 15% average growth in connections. It is forecast to approach 7 billion cellular IoT connections by 2030.
By the end of the decade, more than half of newly provisioned cellular IoT connections will leverage eSIM technology, with the GSMA’s latest SGP.32 (eSIM IoT) specification playing a critical role in enabling long-term insurance against regulatory and commercial headwinds.
Despite the capability to localise connectivity over-the-air via eSIM, Kaleido expects that roaming will continue to support a significant proportion of eSIM-enabled IoT connectivity. Although the new specification enables greater technical simplicity to migrate eSIM profiles, the business case to execute this will be limited to a subset of the overall IoT connection base. Meanwhile, underlying mobile infrastructure to support modern IoT roaming requirements can, in many cases, support business requirements in terms of performance and data sovereignty.
MNO Survey Response to: ‘Which technology(ies) for wide-area connectivity do you view as most viable for IoT deployments?’
Source: Kaleido Intelligence MNO Survey 2025
Satellite connectivity is also emerging as a critical enabler. Once dismissed as too costly or complex, satellite is now the second most favoured technology for wide-area IoT, with 51% of industry leaders viewing it as a viable mainstream solution. In 2026, the integration of satellite with terrestrial mobile networks ensures that “dead zones” no longer exist for global roaming.
Why does this matter for enterprises? It enables “zero-touch” provisioning for LPWAN technologies like NB-IoT and LTE-M. Whether it’s an asset tracker in a shipping container or a smart meter in a remote village, these devices can now switch profiles over-the-air (OTA) without manual intervention, drastically lowering the total cost of ownership.
MNO Strategy: Beyond the Obsolete High-Margin Retail Roaming Model
The most crucial lesson for 2026 is clear: the high-margin, high-cost roaming model is obsolete. To regain market share, mobile operators must move beyond the “bill shock” era and embrace a multi-pronged strategy.
How can operators stand out in such a crowded market? It comes down to three things:
- Own the Digital Experience: Make the operator app the default travel companion or leverage user-friendly eSIM services and super apps for consumers to build brand trust and gain market share.
- Prioritise Performance and Monetise Experience: Offer tiered bundles for streaming, gaming, video conferencing and other basic services to target low and high consumption users, offering better QoS and latency lanes.
- Ensure Better Price Transparency: Eliminate the fear of excessive charges that remains the single greatest deterrent for travellers, at the same time competing directly with eSIM players on simplicity and experience.
The 2026 mandate for MNOs is clear, shift from reactive connectivity to a proactive, platform-centric retail strategy. To protect outbound margins, MNOs must move to a digital-first roaming experience, use 5G Standalone and AI-driven personalisation to earn a premium on performance, and in parallel launch agile, app-based eSIM bundles to unlock at least $1.5 billion of incremental revenue from the “silent roamer” segment.
Your Retail Roaming Strategy
Interested in positioning your Retail Roaming strategy and full data breakdown on these 2026 trends? Access our “Retail Roaming: Market Trends & Outlook 2026” report to leverage deep-dive analytics on regional economic forecasts, 5G SA monetisation, MNO-led strategic initiatives, and the retail impact of travel eSIMs on consumer roaming.
Blog Author: Neelashree Mukherjee (Data Analyst)