Tele2 on Wednesday said it is preparing for huge growth in roaming LTE traffic, driven by IPX deployment and the EU’s ‘roam-like-home’ regulations.
According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), there were 422 live LTE networks spread across 143 countries at the end of the second quarter. By 2020, it predicts the number of LTE subscribers will have grown to 3.5 billion from 755 million at the end of Q2 this year.
"The need for LTE data roaming is essential, said Jan Karmakar, director of Tele2’s international carrier and roaming business, at Carriers World, which is running alongside Total Telecom’s IPX Summit in London this week.
Tele2 began rolling out IPX across its footprint in 2014, and its operating businesses have been launching LTE roaming services ever since. On Wednesday, Karmakar said Tele2 experienced a 50-fold increase in inbound roaming traffic in 2015, compared with 2011.
"That was without introducing any special price plans," he said. "Roam-at-home tariffs will drive data volumes even higher."
Indeed, the EU has set plans in motion with a view to abolishing roaming charges across the bloc by June 2017.
Until then though, operators in the EU will continue to charge a premium when customers access mobile services while abroad, which throws up challenges when it comes to voice over LTE (VoLTE) roaming.
"VoLTE roaming will take some time," Karmakar said. He highlighted that the industry is having difficulty working out how to bill for it, with some suggesting charging per megabit, rather than the traditional per minute billing normally associated with voice; however, that would have to take into account variances in network speed.
& quot;There is quite some journey before we solve that," he said.
