The recently concluded FIFA 2010 World Cup held in South Africa turned out to be good avenue for mobile operators to earn new revenues from international roaming services, says observations from roaming solution provider, Aicent Inc.

An estimated 400,000 visitors from all over the world came to South Africa while the tournament was ON. The international roaming services used by these visitors included sharing/uploading of pictures, videos and messages and data services.

“As the data from our network shows, the World Cup is truly a social event where fans want to share the revelry with friends and family,” said Lynn Liu, president & CEO at Aicent. “Wireless data networks made sharing the action better than ever before as fans sent back millions of pictures, videos, tweets, emails and text messages from games in South Africa to their friends back home. Subscribers from a great number of international wireless networks were all able to use their mobile phones from South Africa due to roaming eXchanges like Aicent.”

According to observations from Aicent, the traffic for international roaming services was higher on days when there were more matches. June 23 ,2010 was the day with highest traffic followed by June 15.

Visitors from USA topped the list of usage of international roaming services in terms of usage when considered country-wise. Subscribers of GSM-based services from USA contributed towards 60% of international roaming services.