1. Using Roaming means you get to use the same PHONE NUMBER that all your contacts have! I know it can get a bit confusing for people who live on WhatsApp … these are things that can be dialled from any part of the world from any phone. Both the caller and the called person DON’T HAVE TO be on the same OTT platform. Perhaps the greatest benefit that roaming offers. Even today when OTTs are so dominant, having one number that can be reached from anywhere offers a great benefit. For calling out as well, In many parts of the world, especially where spam calls are abundant, consumers don’t even take the calls if they don’t identify the number.

  2. A major cost for Telcos is the Customer Acquisition Cost, this could be in hundreds of dollars per customer. It’s easy enough to get a few customers, but to scale and be truly profitable to acquire customers is an expensive proposition. Unlike Roaming, where deals are done between operators through one-to-one relationships each operator getting thousands to millions of roaming customers on their network, eSIM providers will have to spend massive amounts just in marketing to attract customers to their specific platform. Can you imagine the cost of acquiring a customer for two weeks of Roaming in a year? A few years back, the EU commission came up with the bright idea of an Alternate Roaming Provider (ARP), where each MNO was obligated to enable a third party to provide roaming services to their customers … and guess what, it would still be the MNOs who would continue to provide the services, run the infrastructure and all the ARP was supposed to do was sell Roaming plans on a retail basis. Would you like to guess how many ARPs there are today? None, zilch, zero, nyet, nada, sifr ! (Trying to cover as many languages as possible as I’m not sure which language do writers of these spurious posts understand).

  3. Perhaps if the doomsayers did a little bit of research, they would find that in many countries and especially in the west which is the biggest contributor to Roaming traffic, most phones are sold through Mobile phone companies through contracts, and these are obviously locked to the provider and it’s not possible to change to a different provider for Roaming.

  4. Let’s come back and look at the price advantage that eSIMs for Roaming seem to offer. Is this a real advantage based on a fundamentally cheaper cost base that eSIM providers have? Obviously not, as the service is being supported by the same network (visited network) at the other end. If anything, as explained above their acquisition costs will make their cost base much higher, than a traditional MNO. With many operators moving to innovative bundles, where a day’s roaming can cost less than a cup of coffee, or just an additional fee per month gets you to use your domestic bundle while roaming, a small change in the roaming retail tariff can blow a big hole in the entire eSIM for Roaming business case. When it comes to fundamentals, there isn’t a cheaper way than roaming to provide connectivity, for four very simple reasons:

    A) No middleman

    B) No additional platforms/infrastructure

    C) Bi-lateral roaming traffic

    D) No acquisition cost