As we know all too well at dataroam the difference between an internet provider and a mobile network is becoming less and less! The future is unquestionably MB's and not minutes of airtime.
20 years in telecoms is a lifetime, quite literally for SMS! According to a report published by research firm Informa, almost 19 billion texts were sent on chat apps in 2012 while 17.6 billion texts sent were through SMS in the same time span. In financial terms and according to another research report published by Ovum, that's £16 billion of SMS revenue was lost last year in the world due to popularity of chat apps, ouch!
The reason behind this popularity of chat apps is common – they use the same data plan which you use for browsing the web. As a result, you don’t need to pay anything for talking with your loved ones through a messaging app. According to another research report published by Ovum, nearly $23 billion of SMS revenue was lost last year in the world due to popularity of chat apps.
So is it the end for the text message? Informa says not - "There is a lot of life still in SMS," Informa's Pamela Clark-Dickson said, citing the fact that billions of people are still on app-less feature phones rather than smartphones, particularly in developing countries.
The numbers speak for themselves in 2000, UK network operators paid a whopping £22bn for the 3G network licences. However this year they paid just £2.3bn for 4G, knowing it will slash their last major revenue stream.
As we have reported previously data roaming costs are set to fall within the EU. However, £0.45/MB still makes access aboard an expensive commodity within Europe and costs saving tools such as VoiP ineffective.
Consequently, for now, the local data SIM will remain supreme whilst traveling abroad, especially outside of the EU where regulation is unlikely to ever occur.
By utilizing a local data SIM card to run apps such as Whatsapp and Skype you can save a small fortune versus a voice SIM whilst also benefiting from dramatic savings on your data.