4G roaming traffic doubles once more – BICS

Roaming platform provider BICS has revealed that 4G roaming traffic around the world doubled for the third year running in 2019.

BICS reckons this indicates surging appetite for 4G connectivity, which is pretty hard to argue with. It also takes this geometric growth as a good sign for 5G, noting that 50 national 5G networks are now live, although we should add that in many cases the term ‘national’ needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. BICS boldly predicts that 5G roaming will gain further traction this year.

“The exponential growth in roaming traffic highlights how important international connectivity has become to the subscriber experience,” said Mikaël Schachne, CMO of BICS. “Through the provision of seamless, cross-border 5G connectivity, operators will be able to create new revenue streams and support a wide range of new and innovative use cases in areas such as automotive, gaming, telemedicine and logistics. As carriers launch 5G networks, roaming must be at the heart of their offerings to deliver maximum value for subscribers.”

The rest of the short press release is mainly spent stressing how great BICS is at enabling all this roaming, which is fair enough but doesn’t really add much value for the curious industry punter. It will be interesting to see what happens to roaming after Brexit, which is due to finally complete its first phase at the end of this month. This is an opportunity for operators and intermediaries to show they don’t need the help of politicians to keep the global telecoms business functioning smoothly.