As global travel returns and data usage surges, operators must prioritise roaming quality and testing to stay competitive, protect revenues, and deliver seamless customer experiences.
The global COVID-19 pandemic devastated international travel: the UN agency for civil aviation found that international passenger numbers fell by 60% in 2020, taking volumes back to 2003 levels. However, numbers have risen steadily in the past three years, and according to IATA international traffic in 2024 was 0.5% higher than in 2019.
At the same time (and in part influenced by changing usage patterns during the pandemic) consumers are using their connected devices even more frequently and for longer, both for leisure and work activities, and wish to remain connected when roaming.
Unsurprisingly, all the MNOs surveyed by Kaleido in our Wholesale Survey stated that their roaming traffic had increased y-o-y in 2024, with more than half (57%) stating that they had experienced an increase in inbound roaming traffic of between 21% and 50%. Most also expect significant growth in 2025.
This increases the demand for high-quality voice and data services, placing pressure on operators to ensure that their customers have a similar experience while roaming to that of their home networks.
However, roaming quality often lags behind home coverage due to factors like limited 5G availability, reliance on older technologies, and potential network steering that prioritises local users.
Why Roaming Testing Matters
Roaming testing can identify vulnerabilities by simulating real-world roaming scenarios and analysing the network’s response. This involves simulating different network technologies, roaming subscribers, and local subscribers to test the system’s ability to handle various network conditions and configurations, potentially exposing any vulnerabilities in protocols or security measures (such as firewalls and access controls) and enabling the MNOs to mitigate any risks and safeguard user data.
Testing can also help identify misconfigurations within the network, such as outdated software, which could create vulnerabilities that roaming subscribers can exploit, or vulnerabilities within third-party networks that the home network interacts with during roaming.
Additionally, roaming testing can help identify fraud patterns and potential fraud attempts, such as excessive usage or unusual traffic patterns: Kaleido estimates that roaming fraud will peak at $21 billion this year, and while it is expected to decline gradually thereafter, that decline could be accelerated by more rigorous testing.
Although some operators will follow the best recommended practice of balancing the investment between service deployment and service assurance, many will direct almost all spend towards launching VoLTE roaming and 5G roaming services rather than to the testing process. Testing becomes perceived more as a “nice to have” rather than an essential element, a perception which may be accentuated by a lack of synchronisation and communication between MNO departments, many of which may be unaware of its key role in reducing operational effort down the line.
Testing as Insurance
In many ways ongoing roaming testing is analogous to insurance: the benefits of having it in place only emerge when something goes wrong, and doing without it can represent a high risk strategy. If MNOs do not conduct roaming tests and issues emerge, the net result may be a plethora of irate calls to customer service, and without a testing framework in place the source of the problem can take longer to identify, causing both inconvenience to the roamers and reputational damage to the operators concerned.
There is no one size, fits all approach to testing. While some MNOs are critical of the expense incurred in continuous monitoring, the flip side is that it does enable real-time quality assessment and the ability to identify and address issues on an ongoing basis, before they impact the user experience. This then poses a question for the operator: is this a priority for me, or am I prepared to eschew continuous testing and wait for a customer/partner to flag up concerns such as service degradation?
ROI Varies by Roaming Corridor
The answer will probably be determined by the scale of the roaming revenues which are likely to be generated through the bilateral corridor in question. Certainly, operators in countries which see large numbers of outbound tourists heading to a particular destination country, or which receive large numbers of inbound roamers from multiple destinations, or which are on either end of a large remittance corridor, are likely to receive larger roaming revenues, and thus be more willing to countenance spend on continuous roaming testing.
For example, although a small operator such as LMT in Latvia has annual revenues of just under $190 million and a mobile subscriber base of just 1.4 million (of which over 400,000 are IoT), the country has a burgeoning tourist industry, with 2.5 million tourist visitors, primarily from Germany, Finland, the UK, Poland, Russia, the US, Estonia and Lithuania and hence regular testing of roaming services with MNOs in these country corridors should be an absolute priority.
Final Thought: Test Before It Breaks
International tourism is also increasing sharply in countries such as Morocco, Kuwait, El Salvador and Albania, meaning that operators in these destinations need to ensure robust roaming for visitors from both established and emerging key tourism corridors. At the same time, countries in Southeast Asia and Central/Eastern Europe are now fast-growing source markets for international travel, which in turn should prompt operators in these and destination markets to ensure that testing mechanisms are in place.
Furthermore, geopolitical events may result in an upsurge in what might be termed displaced tourism. For example, anti-US sentiment in the wake of President Trump’s re-election and his subsequent imposition of trade tariffs on numerous countries is expected to see a sharp fall in the number of international visitors to the US, with many holidaymakers likely to choose alternative destinations. Similarly, the outbreak of domestic or cross-border conflicts understandably makes tourists reconsider their options: in 2024, the number of international visitors to Israel dropped by 68%, primarily the result of the Hamas-led attacks the previous October and the subsequent Israeli military offensive in Gaza and Beirut; while the recent resurgence of military action in Kashmir has the potential to adversely impact the tourism industries of both India and Pakistan, not least because in some countries of origin, travel insurance will be invalidated if tourists travel against government advice.
Displacement tourism volumes and destinations are thus difficult to predict. That said, MNOs and MVNOs in countries where tourism is either growing or has been identified by national governments as a key growth target should seek to identify emerging tourism corridors and prioritise roaming testing.
Your Roaming Testing Strategy
Interested in positioning your Roaming Testing strategy for success? Access our “Roaming Testing: Market Roadmap 2025” report, exploring the critical challenges operators face in areas such as Quality of Service, Quality of Experience, and service monetisation, alongside the complexities of VoLTE, 5G, and IoT roaming.
Blog Author: Windsor Holden (Principal Research Consultant)