I move country every month or so at the moment. Since telecom providers choose to charge vast sums of money for roaming, I have to get a new sim card in each country. So this whole system is just not going to work for me.

It also means that my phone number is meaningless. I never answer it, as I only use messaging (or messaging calls) to talk to people. But this isn't unique to my situation. A lot of non-roaming friends are the same - they never use phone or even SMS any more. The only people who phone using your number are spammers, scammers and marketroids.

I'm an edge case, but what of someone going on holiday for two weeks? At the moment, they still get a local SIM, because it's massively cheaper than roaming. This would prevent that.

Maybe that's the point - the telecoms companies need a way to keep us locked to our SIMs so we can't switch providers at the drop of a hat.