Nitin Bhas, Juniper Research, said: "As data roaming costs are further reduced and smartphone owners find so-called OTT (Over-the-Top) services – such as eBuddy and Whatsapp – a cheaper alternative, the average spend per SMS roaming will decline over the forecast period."
As of June 2012, only 30 per cent of mobile users actually use data whilst abroad compared to 80% domestically. However Orange appears to be bucking the trend and has seen an increase of 131% from 2009 to 2011. Adding more than one million new roaming customers in 2011, bringing the total up to 25 million Orange Travel customers. They credit some of this success to their ‘Orange Travel Angel App’, which helps customers track their data usage whilst travelling anywhere in the world.
However it's ultimately price reduction that will encourage adoption. If you want ultimate control of your roaming costs then take a look at one of our prepaid data roaming SIM cards.