Says roaming services company
Mobile operators are missing out on more than $500 million each year in lost revenue from global roaming potential, according to roaming technology and services expert Starhome. The findings
identify the major losses being caused by uncompleted calls and dialling mistakes caused by users’ lack of familiarity with international dialling and phone book dialling.
Statistics gathered by Starhome, the leading global provider of roaming technology and services to operators in 60 countries, have demonstrated that an average of 5 per cent of mobile roaming calls are never completed, pointing to huge operator additional revenue potential. The recent Global Mobile Roaming Report by Informa Telecoms & Media shows that in 2004 there were 210,000,000 international mobile roamers, who generated nearly 11 billion roaming minutes per year. Starhome calculates that the 5 per cent of these international calls that are not completed equates to a loss of $525
million per year.
Starhome Director of Marketing, Guy Talmi comments, “International roaming needs to be kept seamless for travellers, so that when they step off the plane they can make calls the same way they do at home. Where it is not yet
seamless, operators can help their customers by automatically fixing their dialling mistakes when roaming and in so doing maintain their level of satisfaction and secure 100 per cent of the roaming revenues.”
Starhome’s Intelligent Call Assistance service adds powerful roaming capabilities such as automatic correction of dialling mistakes. If Roamers’ for example, continue to dial from their phone book while they roam, their calls will still be completed even if dialled without the country code.
Michèle Scanlon, author of the new Informa Telecoms & Media Global Mobile Roaming Report states, “based on our research the numbers of roamers will grow from 210,000,000 in 2004 up to 850,000,000 in 2010. Growth will be driven by an increase in light to medium user segments such as the
occasional business traveller or holidaymaker many of whom may not be familiar with international dialling or usage within the roaming environment. On average roaming contributes 10% to overall operator revenues with even higher margin contributions, so a high rate of uncompleted roaming calls due to roamers’ dialling mistakes will affect the bottom line of each
operator and needs to be addressed”.