Kaleido Intelligence’s Roaming Data Hub – Q3 2020 predicts a substantial increase in cellular IoT roaming traffic over the next 5 years, as companies across several market verticals look to accelerate their digitisation strategies.
IoT Roaming Traffic to Rise from 127 Petabytes in 2020 to Over 560 Petabytes in 2025
COVID-19 has had a significant impact on businesses throughout the world due to social distancing, border closures and supply chain bottlenecks. This has led to a temporary contraction in investment.
The IoT industry has not escaped from this: Kaleido predicts that total cellular IoT connections in 2020 will increase by only 9% over the figure recorded in 2019.
Positive Outlook for IoT Connectivity Investment
Kaleido believes that several factors will contribute to a sustained acceleration in connectivity demand into the medium-term. For instance, remote working support, automation, and remote monitoring are critical requirements for business continuity.
With a high risk of negative business impact as a result of future COVID-19 restrictions or even new pandemics, 2021 will see renewed investment to ensure that risk mitigation strategies are implemented.
Steffen Sorrell, Research Lead at Kaleido Intelligence added:
“COVID-19 has added a positive outlook for IoT connectivity providers, with IoT roaming connections set to see average annual growth to the tune of 33% between 2020 and 2025. The risk to businesses is simply too high and will therefore warrant the comparatively higher cost of cellular technology to support risk mitigation strategies.”
5G to Drive Majority of Consumer Roaming Data Traffic from 2025 Onwards
5G consumer roaming will be less impacted by current disruption and will inevitably bring many new opportunities, service levels and usage levels.
Kaleido predicts an increased adoption for 5G roaming services only from 2023 onwards. Until then 5G roamers are expected to remain under 10 million; representing less than 2% of global active mobile roamers. However, 5G data roaming traffic is forecast to approach 800 PB in 2025, accounting for over 46% of total consumer roaming data traffic.
