Fraudulent data roaming traffic to up by 700% over next 5 years globally: Report

New Delhi: Fraudulent data roaming traffic is expected to grow by nearly 700 per cent over the next five years globally because of the evolution of sophisticated fraudulent tactics such as SIM card swapping, a new report found on Tuesday.

According to Juniper Research, operators would incur a total of $2 billion in operator losses due to roaming fraud in 2023, which is expected to rise to roughly $8.4 billion by 2028, representing an absolute growth of 310 per cent.

Experts estimated that operator losses due to data roaming fraud in 2023 will be the highest compared to other services -- projected to account for 80 per cent of the global losses by service in 2023.

"Losses from global roaming fraud are anticipated to exceed $8 billion by 2028; driven by the increase in bilateral roaming agreements for data-intensive use cases over 5G networks. In turn, fraudulent data traffic will account for 80 per cent of global operator roaming-based losses by 2024," the report said.

The report evaluated roaming fraud across a number of key channels, including voice, SMS, consumer and IoT devices across 60 countries.

Moreover, the report mentioned that this growth in roaming traffic will lead to increased opportunities for fraudsters, such as SIM box fraud, where data is allocated through local routes rather than monetisable roaming channels.

Leading roaming vendors agreed that bilateral 5G roaming agreements are necessary to detect these fraudulent connections.

As bilateral 5G roaming agreements proliferate, operators will deploy more sophisticated fraud mitigation tools, the report stated.

Fraud mitigation services will alert operators of any potentially fraudulent activity across 5G networks in real-time and enable them to identify and block suspicious roaming subscribers.