Multilateral roaming hub provider, Link2One, has attracted six new operators and a larger group that represents 17 operators to join its service in the first three months of 2012. With a membership of more than 230 networks in more than 90 countries, the independent, multilateral GSM/3G roaming hub now claims to be one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Link2One attributes much of its growth to the increase in data roaming traffic. In 2011, it launched more than 2,000 new GPRS relationships and experienced 94% data traffic growth. This growth is set to continue, with worldwide mobile data traffic set to increase 18-fold over the next five years, according to a Cisco Systems study.
Ralf Weigand, general manager at Link2One, said: “Link2One is already the fastest-growing roaming hub in the world, implementing more than 1,000 new roaming relationships each month. We are also now one of the largest hubs of this kind in the world; the combined subscriber base of our operator customers now exceeds one billion worldwide. This means that new operator customers joining the Link2One hub can quickly launch a comprehensive roaming business that provides more global coverage than any other hub.”
Paul Merry, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, added: “The hubbing market continues to grow, largely driven by the growth in data roaming and the need for operators to extend roaming services into the prepaid user base. More and more operators are seeing the value of joining hubs as they provide a highly cost-effective and rapid means for developing a roaming business. For these reasons, there is still much room for growth within the hubbing market for vendors such as Link2One that are able to provide an effective service that delivers the right SLA’s and coverage reach to customers.”
The management and expansion of roaming services and relationships can be costly and time consuming – a situation set to become increasingly complex with the additional challenge of providing maximum roaming coverage for voice services, CAMEL, GPRS and 3G. Link2One provides a hub framework of multilateral roaming agreements for data, prepaid, voice and 3G services. The hub benefits operators by providing a ‘plug and play’ roaming business, which allows them to reduce time to market for roaming services. Uniquely, the Link2One hub also provides operators with access to a single financial and clearing settlement pool with integrated payments. Operators greatly benefit from this significantly simplified approach to roaming, which allows them to more quickly and profitably grow and expand into new markets.
