In a study by Machina Research commissioned by Starhome Mach, a global provider of roaming services, M2M roaming connections has doubled in the last 12 months, representing seven percent of global roaming connections. Machina Research estimates that global M2M connections will rise to 1.3 billion over the next five years from the current 350 million. It estimates that by 2020 there will be more M2M roaming connections than those caused by connections made by humans.
According to Machina Research, despite the hostility of some regulators, ‘permanent roaming’ remains an important way of serving multinational customers in M2M, many of whom want to deal with a single provider. This is particularly the case for global manufacturers who do not to provision their products with a different SIM depending on the destination to which their products are being shipped.
While the growth in visitors and traffic is obviously good news for network operators, there are also hidden pitfalls for the unwary, putting possibly catastrophic pressure on mobile networks if it continues at the current rate, cautions the market research firm,
Machina Research added that roaming M2M devices have different usage profiles from human roamers; some are heavy users of data, but others may send and receive very little, while still being heavy consumers of ‘free’ signalling resources on the visited network.
Jeremy Green, Principal Analyst at Machina Research
Network operator need to be more aware of what is happening with both inbound and outbound roaming M2M devices.
