Sick of Roaming Fees? Now Your Carrier Is Hurting Too

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed an uncomfortable truth about the telecoms industry: Roaming, that old bugbear of the world traveler, still accounts for a disproportionate amount of profit. It’s an addiction that carriers just aren’t ready to wean themselves off, even as it becomes harder to justify and drives customers to Silicon Valley alternatives.

The 2020 travel hiatus has lost European carriers some 2 billion euros in roaming fees, according to my calculations based on this year’s earnings reports. That might only be about 1% of their total revenue, but in many cases the drop-off has been enough to make the difference between profit growing and shrinking, trimming earnings for some operators by four or five percentage points. It chips away at their contention that new digital tools are making profitability more resilient.