Category: IP Networks

A2P SMS or Application-to-Person SMS services are important tools for most organizations. Whether it is to send out notifications and alerts, appointment reminders, marketing campaigns, or customer relationship management. In short, A2P messaging is among the most effective ways to grab the customer’s attention. Industries such as banking, healthcare, e-commerce, and even entertainment are utilizing this cost-effective way to stay connected with their customers.

The massive reach of SMS messaging can’t be ignored. In fact, research from Gartner shows that SMS has the highest click-through rates, and SMS open rates trump email open rates. Owing to these numbers, the A2P SMS market is on an upward growth trajectory and is estimated to cross $86.5 bn by 2025.

While this number looks great, the Telecom industry faceslosses of $17bn per year< owing to the actions of illegitimate criminal enterprises. So, while mobile operators are looking at unlocking the revenue potential of A2P SMS messaging, the problem of revenue leakage and fraud via unsolicited routes casts a dark shadow on these otherwise sunny skies. In fact, according to a study, “Unsolicited routes are expected to cost the mobile network operators almost US$ 50 billion between 2018-2023”

But how does this revenue leakage happen?

A2P SMS taking the unsolicited route end up exploiting loopholes in the GSM framework and side-stepping the termination charges for the SMS. In such cases, the SMS service could be leveraged at lower than market value by denying mobile and tier-one messaging aggregators vital revenue. Obviously, the quality of the messages is also impacted here since these are routed through unregulated and poorly constructed mobile networks which are often located in inaccessible corners of the globe. As a rule, messages get delivered late or worse, not at all.

Mobile operators have to take strict measures to prevent revenue leakage and block unsolicited route traffic from whittling away their revenue streams. Along with this, consider the impact on the subscriber’s experience and the lack of trust that mobile operators face owing to the influx of unsolicited, fake, and spam messages originating from the unsolicited route.

As the prevention of fraud and revenue leaks assume paramount importance for mobile operators, SMS firewalls become a venerable tool to fight this battle.

SMS Firewall comes to the rescue

To grow customer satisfaction and revenue, mobile operators have to use the right tools and adopt a comprehensive strategy. They have to start with mapping out all the unidentified leakages such as the unsolicited routes, improperly charged routes as well as network abuse. They have to ensure that the tools they use eliminate unsolicited routes by ensuring that A2P traffic is not and cannot be merged with valid person-to-person (P2P) traffic and routes just to avoid bearing A2P charges.

Since the unsolicited routes disregard the rules of engagement between operators, they also impact the trust that has grown on SMS transmission channels. SMS firewalls are an effective strategy to block these unsolicited routes and ensure that enterprise traffic is diverted through the approved channels only.

A full-fledged SMS firewall with international and domestic traffic control also helps mobile operators prevent message flooding by blocking large amounts of messages to one or more destinations. The SMS firewall looks out for traffic surges, unwanted traffic spikes, and improper content and filters these out while simultaneously identifying and proactively blocking the sources and unsolicited routes.

Preventing fake SMS messaging and improving the security of the SMS by identifying manipulated addresses of the messages can also be ensured by using SMS firewalls. This is also the way to greater control as it helps mobile operators control the SMS traffic in their network. Operators can employ special rules for specific roaming partners, sources of incoming traffic, types of traffic, and types of sender ID.

A robust SMS firewall helps mobile operators improve their capacity to prevent network congestion that results from spamming and flooding. It helps in increasing end-user trust by eliminating concerns emerging from activities like SMS faking, SMS spoofing, SMS phishing, SMS viruses are all.

Obviously, mobile operators should have clarity on every single message terminating in their network. Many mobile operator networks (MON) lose revenue because of the A2P bypass, global title bypass, and illegal A2P routes. These can lead to significant losses in revenues. As it happens, this can also open up just the avenue hackers need to flood the network without paying any of the fees. With the SMS firewall, mobile operators achieve transparency on the messages terminating in their network and can also maximize profits by identifying otherwise untapped sources of revenue.

This is the age of SMS firewalls with built-in AI and ML intelligence. These smarter firewalls can stop fraudulent activity, revenue leakage, and build trust in the network. By leveraging a robust and comprehensive SMS firewall, mobile operators, therefore, can gain a transparent understanding of their monthly costs. They can leverage insights to convert Opex to Capex costs while ensuring that A2P SMS traffic is routed only through the approved channels.

Enterprises and industries look at A2P messaging to effectively engage with customers and prospects. This is a critical channel for customer engagement that impacts the customer experience. As such, mobile operators need to pull up their socks and make sure they have the right countermeasures in place to stop illegitimate A2P transmission and spam from zapping profits.

If this is a concern for you too, then connect with our experts to learn how to protect your network from SMS fraud and revenue leakage today.

In the last three decades, the telecommunication industry has evolved dramatically – from analog telephone lines to digital quad+ play mobile service providers. Today, the telecommunication sector is entering the 5G landscape promising unmatched connectivity and bandwidth.

Technology evolution has spiked the range of available opportunities as well as competition, and unfortunately, malpractices too. Cybercrimes are on the rise as vulnerabilities get exposed. Telecom frauds have become commonplace and need to be addressed on priority as estimates peg their cost at €29 billion per year.

Evolution of Telecom Frauds

The Telecom industry is seen as young, but if we look for the very first telecom fraud, it will take us two centuries back. The first telecom fraud was committed in the 1830s by two French brothers – Francois and Joseph Blanc. The brothers were bankers working at the stock exchange in Bordeaux – primitively trading in government bonds. Owing to the fragmented telecom sector back then, the Blanc brothers found a way of sending messages by “hacking” the telecom network, thus opening the gates to telecom frauds.

Since then, the telecom industry has obviously evolved. Numerous new technologies have been introduced for fraud detection in the telecom industry. But as is always the case, as telecom service providers have gone smart, similarly, telecom hackers too have become proficient.

Today, there are a series of common telecom frauds being reported worldwide. These impact the revenue potential of telecom service providers and hurt customers too.

Let’s understand some of the common telecom frauds the industry is facing:

Traffic Pumping Scheme

It is a revenue-sharing scheme designed by fraudsters who promise to increase traffic to a specific level at a high destination cost. The signature style of this telecom fraud type is to spike traffic to high-cost destinations. Fraudsters take advantage of telecom service provider’s lax security practices. These frauds often leave service providers with large monetary losses. These kinds of attacks often occur during holidays and weekends when networks aren’t monitored closely due to surges and reduced staff loads.

Vishing Calls

This is one of the most common telecom frauds, which is a combination of the word “Voice” and “Phishing.” It is similar to phishing email attacks – the difference is just that fraudsters make calls to the victims. During the vishing calls, fraudsters create a false scenario and trick victims to share their personal, security, or financial information. In some situations, fraudsters even compel victims to transfer money to them. These types of fraud are very hard to detect, and catching fraudsters is even harder.

One-ring-and-cut or Wangari

Wangari is a common scenario in the telecom domain. It is a telecom scam where hackers lure victims to call premium-rate numbers. In this method, fraudsters set a system of a large number of random telephone numbers. They call each phone number up to one ring and leave a missed call on the recipient’s phone.

Usually, when people see a missed call from an unknown number on their phone, they call back, considering it a genuine number, and get their entire call balance lost on calling the premium rate number. It is a very cunning and well-organized telecom fraud practiced around the globe.

International Revenue Sharing Fraud

International Revenue Sharing Fraud, or shortly referred to as IRSF, is one of the most damaging telecom fraud schemes to date. Under this fraud, money is transferred from one carrier to another based on the inter-carrier trust between telecom operators. IRSF telecom fraudsters are very smart; they wait for logs to expire before executing the next step in their money-laundering scheme.

According to the IRS, more than 1,029,601 Americans have received IRSF fraud calls, and approximately $29,100,604 had been lost on these calls in 2016 alone. On the global level, numerous awareness programs and events are organized to protect people from these scam calls, but this telecom fraud is still flourishing.

Call Forwarding Fraud

In this VoIP telecom fraud, criminals gain access to an enterprise PBX system, which they use to make expensive long-distance calls and pocket what they charge to the users. Generally, telecom service providers state that customers are liable to pay for fraudulent calls. But, in reality, it’s hard to make the customer pay for the fraud calls as they could simply disconnect network services and move to another service provider. And all the fraud call financial burden falls on the service provider’s shoulder.

How are telecom frauds impacting revenues?

The global loss due to fraudulent practices in 2019 was $28.3 billion, and telecom fraud has a big share in it. Some of the top fraud types have been payment fraud, IP PBX fraud, abuse of network or device, or configuration weaknesses, and IoT fraud. As it happens, with the explosion of smartphone technology, the number of telecom frauds has also seen a spike as new venues and vulnerabilities open up. In the app economy, a lot of customer validation happens through mobile phones and SMS networks now. In that scenario, Account Takeover frauds are now becoming very common with targeted consumer attacks.

Additionally, as per the Cyber-Telecom Crime Report 2019 published by Trend Micro and Europol, the evolution from switchboard operations to the circuit and packet-switched operators has added to the telecom fraud occurrences causing losses of $33 billion revenue loss each year. The report also reveals that traditional financial criminals are the ones turning their attention to telecom scams. The report has suggested that developing or failed nations are the main originators of telecom fraud that is perpetrated in developed nations like the USA or the UK.

In a nutshell, telecom frauds are unfortunately common as they have continued to evolve at pace with telecom technology. These myriad frauds have shown the potential to adversely impact the revenue of telecom service providers. Also, along with revenue loss, this scenario is also tarnishing the reputation of telecom companies.

Clearly, it is extremely important for telecom service providers to invest in fraud detection and security technologies. The good news is that by partnering with the right telecom solution provider, fraud can be easily detected and avoided.

Until a few years ago, email and SMS were the primary ways to send out business messaging to customers. However, the proliferation of smartphones and the internet have transformed the “business to consumer” communication landscape. From email and SMS, now we have social media, messaging applications and instant messaging all set to influence business messaging.

The digital impact on business messaging

The business messaging landscape is also witnessing rapid evolution as customers become more informed and digitally savvy. As the smartphone becomes an extension of the customer’s life, business messaging has become more refined, contextual, and sophisticated. That apart, along with the ubiquitous SMS, new mobile messaging technologies are becoming a part of the business messaging ecosystem.

Business messaging continues to rise in prominence and importance owing to the growing adoption of digital marketing solutions. With the era of notifications and alerts upon us, enterprises across the globe are looking to deliver quality information regarding their products and service offerings to their potential customers in a medium comfortable to both – the customers and the enterprise. This has been a major contributor to the incremental rise of A2P communication especially for enterprises as they vie to build customer loyalty, boost customer interaction, and build stronger customer relations.

Channels of business messaging have also proliferated because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As more businesses moved online, the need for effective and efficient communication and customer engagement services only increased.

Email marketing, once a very popular and preferred channel for business messaging has slipped down the popularity ladder. Customer inboxes are usually flooded with offer-related emails, making the discovery of relevant information harder consequently leading to low opening rates. Text messages and SMS’s, comparatively experience greater reachability. Gartner reports that “SMS open and response rates as high as 98% and 45%, respectively — in contrast to corresponding figures of 20% and 6% for email.”

This is further expected to contribute to and drive A2P SMS market growth

Enterprise A2P SMS services also continue to rise in prominence for business messaging as it is highly popular amongst startups and small enterprises. Lower costs associated with A2P SMS continue to be a major attraction along with increasing numbers of smartphone and internet users.

SMA retains its power

While SMS still continues to be a powerful business messaging channel, businesses are looking out for technology options that make SMS more engaging. Business messaging too is looking to access functionalities like embedded images, video buttons, animation, suggested replies, etc. readily available on consumer applications. RCS or Rich Communication Services (RCS) builds on this potential by helping businesses achieve truly engaging messaging experiences and bring about a messaging evolution.

Taking both SMS and RCS into account, the messaging industry is expected to grow from 1.55 trillion messages of A2P traffic in 2018 and to surpass the 2 trillion mark by 2023.

However, in the business messaging landscape, despite new developments, SMS technology is set to maintain its important position despite messaging apps continuing to vie for market share. This is especially so as email, though a preferred mode of business messaging, usually ends up in spam folders and has low read rates.

Instant messaging is still navigating regulatory waters as they can be available only as downloaded apps. Since these companies are usually outside of the regulatory control of local governments, enterprises are wary of depending on them and especially for critical functions.

While RCS looks like the most probable candidate, ensuring how to use it to best interact with the customer and get the best cost while doing so is going to be the next frontier to navigate.

Navigating the security landscape

The conversation about the changing dynamics of business messaging is also incomplete without speaking of security. Along with ensuring the quality of communication, maintaining consumer trust using strategies such as two-factor authentication and employing firewall solutions will gain momentum. The use of blockchain to further encrypt messages can bolster the security posture. However, the regulatory chasm still remains to be crossed. As such, it hardly comes as a surprise to see research predicting 3.5 trillion SMS business messages will be sent in 2023 – an increase from the estimated 2.5 trillion in 2019. The focus on A2P messaging will continue to be the preferred enterprise medium to communicate with the customers.

In Conclusion

Voice, premium, instant messaging, SMS, OTT, white route messages, and grey route messages, both, constitute a massive opportunity for telco players and service providers – either to identify opportunities or to evaluate gaps that cause revenue and customer trust to leak and dissipate. While they explore new and potential opportunities that drive profit, building and maintaining customer trust by proactively maintaining a great security posture becomes critical. Elements like Network protection, building trusted, carrier-grade, real-time communications across IP network borders to enhance security, performance, and reliability will contribute to customer retention and revenues. A new world of business messaging is already here.

Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable once famously said that attention is the new currency. Every business is vying for the customer’s attention. In a world where the average consumer is glued to the smartphone, the mobile has become the new battleground for brands in this quest for customer connection.

Businesses reach out to customers through various channels such as social media platforms, Facebook messenger, and instant messengers such as WhatsApp. However, contrary to what some may believe, SMS communication is still alive and thriving. That said, if the aim is to connect and engage, businesses need to think beyond sending plain text SMS. They need to send rich texts to gain customer’s attention. Enter RCS!

Rich Communication Services (RCS) create messaging touchpoints that are more engaging and provide a rich experience to customers. RCS adds that value in Application to Peer (A2P) SMS.

No wonder brands are willing to spend $18.04 billion on RCS.

RCS enables businesses to send multimedia and experiment with different types of content such as hyperlinked texts, rich images, and even polls and quizzes through A2P SMS.

The results are evident too. According to mGage’s research, RCS achieved a 14 times higher engagement rate and a better response rate than other methods used previously.

While businesses are expected to benefit from RCS, how do mobile operators stand to benefit from it?

Let’s delve into the subject to know more.

How Can Mobile Network Operators Benefit From Rich Communication Services?

1. Better customer experience

With the help of rich communication services, businesses can send high-resolution pictures and heavy files to their customer contacts, share locations and add emoticons and features to their messages to make them more interactive. Such messages will improve customer engagement by virtue of being more interesting and inviting. Businesses can also brand their messages to give them a distinct identity. These features enable mobile operators to strengthen their connection with the customer by being consistent across all the channels they use to communicate. This is a remarkable difference from the current fragmented experience offered to them. Most importantly, the transition from SMS to RCS is seamless. Studies show that customers are already overwhelmed by the number of channels being added to the ecosystem. They don’t want to download an additional messaging app to interact with businesses. However, RCS does not require the customer to download another app. They are automatically upgraded to RCS. So, they can leverage the benefits provided by apps like WhatsApp and Signal from the default messaging app available on their smartphone.

2. New revenue-generating opportunities

RCS provides a unique opportunity for mobile operators to generate more revenue beyond their traditional revenue channels. Businesses are forever on the lookout for new digital channels to reach out to new and existing customers. Some channels are effective, while some do not offer the kind of ROI expected. For example, a banner ad generates an average of 0.1% CTR. As SMS is more personal and sent to the in-built messaging app, the CTR and open rates are much higher. Add to that the power and engagement of RCS and the brand campaigns promise to outperform by 207%. According to Gartner, the interoperability of SMS and its better reach to customers makes it an extremely viable marketing channel for businesses. They know that it’s a channel that customers will use regularly. In fact, operators are expected to generate $52.5 billion from RCS messaging by 2028.

3. Improved customer retention

Some messaging platforms have come under the scanner due to data privacy concerns. SMS and RCS are still considered safer options as they are known to protect customer’s data by default and are permission-based. This helps businesses to communicate safely with their customers and retain them. Apart from helping businesses, RCS messaging can also be useful for mobile operators to retain their customers. Instead of sending plain text SMS to their customers, operators can send rich communication with capabilities to enable customers to respond to messages. They can use rich templates to create brand recall for customers. Most importantly, they can reduce customer churn by creating an engaging and consistent experience for customers across the entire communication ecosystem the customer uses.

Conclusion

RCS provides many benefits to both businesses and subscribers. The future of RCS messaging looks positive as carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are planning to embrace RCS from 2022. Also, considering that SMS is still the most used form of communication in many countries and does not require an app to be downloaded, RCS messages have a scope to reach out to more customers than the new messaging platforms.

However, there are also a few shortcomings, such as both the network and texting apps must support the protocol. Otherwise, the customer might not be able to use RCS across all networks. Also, some regions such as Europe and France are still slow in adopting RCS. The other bottleneck in adoption is that only 8.9% of global mobile networks support RCS messaging.

Unless these challenges are resolved, businesses and operators cannot realize the full potential of RCS. However, operators can partner with trusted solution providers to optimize the usage of RCS messaging and gain a competitive advantage.

To know more, contact us.

As enterprises and individuals both embrace digital transformation, telcos are also being pushed to innovate to meet market and subscriber demands. Value-added offerings that leverage the capabilities of technology solutions like 5G connectivity and A2P SMS for enterprises promise telcos the ability to generate revenue and thrive in a competitive market. For example, Ericsson predicts that telcos will generate additional revenue of $3.7 trillion by 2030 through various 5G-driven options.

However, as telcos get more innovative with their offerings, they have to be careful about opening the doors to new problems. One major concern in that context is the need to prioritize subscribers’ privacy.

Over the last few years, subscribers have become increasingly aware of their right to privacy. Studies have shown that 60% of subscribers are concerned about how their data is used. 47% of them believe that the apps they use gather their data through GPS, microphones, etc. There is a general uneasiness about privacy because of a lack of trust about the intent of businesses that have access to their data. It’s not just about the privacy of course. People are also worried about safety and security as cyber crimes have increased by 600% in 2020 alone.

As technologies get more sophisticated and operations more high-touch, telcos need to find ways to protect the privacy of their subscribers. They need to do this to regain the subscribers’ trust.

Here are some ways to safeguard their privacy.

How Can Telcos Protect The Privacy Of Their Subscribers?

In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was initiated across the EU to protect people’s privacy. Telcos were also covered under this regulation. This means that telcos were equally responsible for safeguarding the subscribers’ privacy and data.

To safeguard subscribers from data breaches or privacy threats, telcos are implementing solutions such as:

1. Content filtering

A2P SMS has become a popular communication channel for enterprises to reach out to subscribers. However, subscribers have been receiving an overload of SMS. Many of these messages are spam. To ensure that subscribers receive only genuine messages, telcos have started using content filtering options to identify and block spam messages. These filters look for messages with specific keywords or certain types of content, which could be considered spam, and block them before sending them to subscribers. Many countries in large telecom markets have already initiated a process where the messages are scrubbed, standardized, and sent in a specific template to safeguard subscribers from spam messages.

2. SMS firewall

Considering that SMSes are vulnerable to suspicious malware attacks and spams, telcos use SMS firewalls to block illegal SMS traffic. When a message comes to the telecom operator’s network, the firewall immediately scans them for its originator, source, and route. It analyzes the messages and classifies them. The messages are immediately blocked, and the sender is informed if found to be suspicious. Telcos can also set intelligent firewall rules to determine which messages are authorized and unauthorized and also allow or reject SMS traffic accordingly. An SMS firewall protects the subscribers’ privacy and protects the telcos from losing their reputation and revenue over spurious messages.

3. Direct routing

Grey routes have always been a concern for telcos as the messages are sent through unauthorized networks. As there is little control over these unethical routes, telcos stand to lose an estimated $62 billion of their revenue. Also, considering that these SMSes are sent through unethical networks that are inherently subject to less management and oversight, they could pose a privacy threat for subscribers and expose them to vulnerabilities. The solution to this problem is direct routing. Telcos can directly connect with operators in different countries, so the messages are sent directly to the subscribers in that country. Telcos can also set up re-routing or test the routes to ensure that the messages are sent through reliable networks. Telcos can also identify and fix routes that are suspicious to safeguard the data and privacy of subscribers.

Conclusion

Although telcos use sophisticated tools to bring transparency in their solutions, they cannot combat privacy breaches alone. Safeguarding the subscribers’ privacy requires combined efforts from Governments and enterprises too. Governments have started implementing regulations such as GDPR. As for enterprises, they are also developing products that have privacy firmly integrated into all phases of development. Ericsson says that even telcos must implement privacy by design to ensure that security and privacy policies are followed.

Innovative solutions will become a mainstay in the future. Subscribers will widely use technologies like 5G and connected devices. By making privacy a default element, telcos, enterprises, and governments will be able to safeguard the subscribers from vulnerabilities and ensure that they receive the best service and experience. Telcos and enterprises must also work with a trustworthy telecom solutions provider to ensure that their solutions are safe.

2020 made the enterprise universe fundamentally reassess ways of working. The push towards digital transformation, something that had been growing over the years, accelerated as the pandemic forced everyone to work from home. Organizations had to realign their IT budgets, modernize infrastructure, and identify digital channels. They turned to digital means to drive customer experience, accelerate revenues, improve operational excellence, and enable collaboration and innovation while ensuring business continuity.

Digital transformation has now become crucial to sustaining growth. However, while digital transformation depends on technology that can improve the capacity to chase new revenue streams or business models, technology alone does not guarantee digital transformation. Organizations have to reshape how they strategize and learn to utilize technology in newer ways. This isn’t always about adopting cutting-edge technologies. It’s equally about how to leverage the omnipresent technologies of the day, like the mobile phone.

Let’s look at the starring role for the mobile in enterprise digital transformation and the opportunity this creates for telcos and communication service providers.

Mobility and its role in Digital Transformation

Enterprises looking to leverage digital technologies to transform their organization have to employ mobile to drive company-wide transformation.

Research suggests that 82% of executives agree mobile technologies are the face of digital transformation. This can’t come as a surprise given the growing smartphone proliferation and deep adoption in the enterprise space. Today, 80% of executives believe that workers cannot do their jobs without their smartphones. 70% of access to enterprise systems is via mobile devices.

Digital transformation conversations are thus incomplete without adequate focus on mobile. When people regularly use enterprise software from a mobile device it indicates that the system has become the lifeblood of the business. The enterprise mobile app allows employees to connect to core processes from anywhere, at any time, and be productive, free of locational constraints.

The objective of digital transformation is to infuse a wave of efficiency across the length and breadth of the organization. By incorporating mobility as an integral component of digital transformation, organizations can unleash significant latent potential by empowering a new level of employee performance. They can gain the capacity to redistribute access and intelligence all through the ecosystem, drive productivity and collaboration, and improve customer experience.

Mobility is central to the enterprise digital transformation narrative because it assists enterprises to develop the capability to:

• Improve customer experience and customer satisfaction, build rapport with overseas clients and connect with clients more efficiently across boundaries and time constraints
• Increase productive time by providing “always-on” access to systems and processes
• Improve the amount and quality of information captured because of multiple data touchpoints on the mobile application
• Drive employee enablement at work irrespective of where work happens
• Reach out and engage with customers on a channel of their choosing
• Improve data and process portability and enable smooth content sharing to enhance collaboration and communication experiences
• Increase time efficiencies and improve timely decision-making by providing access to vital data. This also increases cost efficiencies as storage and retrieval of data become synchronized along with complete access control of all the systems.
• Reduce costs by eliminating paper-based workflows, enabling remote work, and helping employees do more work in less time.
• Drive business process optimization and increase operational flexibility

Since the smartphone has cemented itself firmly into our lives, it’s no wonder that we are seeing similar trends in the enterprise. Given the power of mobility to enhance digital transformation initiatives, it makes abundant sense to adopt a mobile-first approach when embarking on the digital transformation journey.

The role of mobile operators and CSPs

The mobile is driving the ‘anytime, anywhere, and always available’ culture that these dynamic times demand. That’s why, we cannot discount the role of telcos, mobile operators, and CSPs in making this digitally-powered work environment a success.

Mobile operators and CSPs become important enablers of time and cost efficiencies especially as drivers of unified communication. Enabling retail quality routes, high clarity Voice using low-latency routes, and ensuring connections over IPX, multiple SIP protocol/codecs, or Managed IP become important enablers of connectivity to drive direct interconnections globally.

CSP’s and mobility carriers also must ensure that they have the right firewall solutions in place to protect themselves and block illegal traffic. They have to ensure that no A2P traffic reaches subscribers via the grey route to avoid monetary losses and unwelcome network congestions from spamming.

Enabling the right security protocols, system-level filtering, Intelligent SMS firewall rules, and guarantees of uptime with heartbeat redundancy become important consideration points to optimize the mobility experience.

In Conclusion

The role of mobile in the digital transformation narrative is only going to get stronger. Even companies like Microsoft have experienced ‘two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months”. McKinsey further notes that while the pace of the pre-COVID world was fast, the luxury of time has completely disappeared now. All along digital transformation emerges as the antidote to the crisis and an imperative for the new normal. Given the proliferation of smartphones and the app economy, enabling digital transformation without a focus on mobile is almost like wanting to bake a cake without an oven. As is apparent, telecom companies, mobile operators, and CSPs have a crucial supporting role there too.

As the world turns into a global village, connectivity has become important among businesses and people.

To help businesses and people stay connected irrespective of geographic locations, telecom companies have been offering attractive options to their users. One of them is virtual roaming numbers.

A virtual roaming number is a telephone number that is not limited to a specific phone device, area code, or line. Unlike traditional landlines that are physically connected to a location and designed to work over a single phone line or a mobile number that is typically tethered to a specific mobile service for coverage; a virtual roaming number is more flexible and devoid of physical constraint. So, even a company that is based in Asia can show its local presence in the US or UK by using a virtual number.

A virtual roaming number is flexible and saves costs on hardware and maintenance.

Considering that the virtual roaming number offers so many benefits to businesses and end-users; it makes a strong case for telecom companies to extend it as one of their services.

Here’s how telecom companies could benefit from the virtual roaming number.

Value Of Virtual Roaming Number For Telecom Companies

Opportunity to expand to new markets and expand penetration onto existing markets

The telecom industry is a fragmented industry that struggles to find ways to create revenue opportunities and new business models. Virtual numbers can help provide an attractive option to address that.

A virtual number is an online number. So, there are more opportunities for operators to expand and penetrate new and existing markets. In many ways, it may also be easier to get a license for operating a virtual number. Virtual number operators (VNO) can offer unique services and unique value propositions to a specific group of users in new markets to gain a competitive advantage. It can help them to acquire new subscribers for their service. For example, they can offer low-cost connectivity to people living in developing countries. A virtual network operator can also help in solving the teledensity issues in remote areas by investing in them. This can help them to gain more subscribers and penetrate deeper into existing markets where reach is less.

Attract more inbound roamers

According to a study, mobile operators earned$21 billion from roaming. Inbound roamers have captured the fancy of telecom operators for a long time. This solution enables them to offer competitive pricing and unique services to these users. It also enables them to capture loyalty if the user visits the place frequently for business or to meet their family or relatives. Virtual numbers are useful for frequent travelers as they can enjoy the benefits of a local number and make and receive calls effortlessly. As soon as an inbound roamer enters a place, they can obtain a prepaid local number roaming (PLNR) without changing their SIM. Once they activate the prepaid number, they can avail of all the local services until their stay. They can top up the virtual number easily and also use it for their future visits. Considering the value and convenience it offers to inbound roamers, operators must consider offering these services to gain more subscribers.

Minimal to zero investment in infrastructure

Virtual network operators do not have to duplicate infrastructure. Network Service Operators (NSO) who invest heavily in spectrum licenses can enter into a sharing model with virtual network operators. It creates a win-win situation for both. The VNO can minimize additional expenditure on infrastructure. If they are a new entrant, they can expand their services easily. The NSO, on the other hand, can earn a recurring income from the VNO and optimally monetize its resources. This helps them to minimize the losses incurred due to high operational costs.

Better service to users

In continuation with the point above, by sharing the infrastructure costs, the telecom operators can reduce the cost of service delivery. This benefit eventually gets passed on to their customers in the form of attractive pricing. Typically, a virtual roaming number works on an all-in-one model, i.e. it offers all types of services such as calling, messaging, VoIP, video conferencing, and data services. Considering that it blurs the lines between network and services, it will soon be able to offer better-bundled services to the users. It will give the power of choice to users.

The virtual roaming number plays well into the themes that are relevant to the future of the telecom industry by being more customer-centric. We have attractive and easy-to-deploy solutions for innovative and future-focused telecom operators who wish to offer . These solutions will help them acquire more users and stay a step ahead of the competition.

5G promises a future of technology-enabling innovation and a host of benefits. The technology underlying 5G marks a break with 4G in many ways, especially when demanding a fundamental reconceptualization of the communication networks. The previous mobile technology generations were built on a physical architecture while 5G, a completely virtual network, enables the convergence of networks and makes wireless communication a fundamental truth.

5G promises to support transformative applications, becoming a driver of a new world of intelligent factories, autonomous cars, and smart cities. We expect lightning-fast speed, increased capacity, and reduced latency. 5G is expected to be 100 times faster. Downloading a two-hour movie, for example, may take merely four seconds with 5G. Given its potential, some studies show that 5G can be expected to pump 12 trillion dollars into the global economy.

Just as 5G becomes the enabler of a totally connected world, it also raises concerns about enabling a larger surface area for cyberattacks. This is primarily because 5G networks connect more devices than previous technologies at a “fatter” bandwidth and with lower network latency. This means more endpoints to attack and an enabling network capacity that may make “brute force” attacks practically possible.

However, as with any new technology, an introduction of 5G requires revisiting cyber-security strategies. Building greater resilience by identifying and countering the risks specific to 5G can enable this technology to become a powerful force to generate revenues and drive profits.

The security challenge

Security is one of the major stumbling blocks to the adoption of 5G. Until now, navigating the security chasm was difficult because many standards that could govern its implementation and management hadn’t been fleshed out. Reliable estimates of the kind of new threats that could emerge were missing. While this could influence multiple aspects, its impact on security could be disastrous as it risks providing more elbow room for malicious elements to break down the defenses.

Clearly, keeping 5G networks secure and keeping them safe from malicious intent and activity for businesses and society alike will be essential for ensuring the safety of the end-users. With these concerns in mind, recent announcements of 5G specifications being updated and aligned with zero-trust tenets is good news.

Why zero-trust works in favour of 5G

A vital point to secure any network is to understand where vulnerabilities could arise. Usually, risks transition from one network to another at the point of interconnection. As such, it becomes essential that all the companies involved on each side of these transitions need to adopt a coordinated approach to ensure effective end-to-end security.

By aligning 5G specifications with zero-trust tenets, the telecom industry assumes a strong position to create a zero-trust architecture that everyone can “subscribe” to. The zero-trust security model becomes effective in the 5G scenario as it never makes any assumptions towards trustworthiness.

A zero-trust architecture facilitates secure network access to resources (data, devices, and services) and ensures that it is restricted to only the authorized and approved subjects ((users, devices, and services). This approach assumes an identity-centric approach based on the execution of policy-based authorization decisions in runtime in conjunction with traditional in-depth security principles. The right zero-trust architecture mitigates the risk of external attackers elbowing their way into the network or moving laterally in case of a security breach. The key areas where this zero-trust architecture needs implementing could be to:

• Secure digital identities are the key factor that determine whether an access request should be accepted or not. A zero-trust architecture establishes protocols after assessing the environment, which includes virtualized deployments, multi-tenant environments, and the hardware ecosystem, to deliver secure identity lifecycle management.
• Secure communication transport of user and signaling data across 3GPP interfaces. A zero-trust architecture ensures that all data is secured with cryptographic algorithms thereby delivering integrity protection and confidentiality
• Manage the relationship between the host of logical and physical entities across the telecom network and create a capable policy framework that captures the access rules and requirements to determine eligibility requests. These policies enable the enforcement of micro-perimeters with fine-grained access control based on roles, credentials, and environmental attributes
• Establish the right security posture of network assets and ensure compliance with security policies. Monitor and evaluate subjects, resources compliance, trustworthiness, and state to design access controls.

The journey towards zero-trust must be carefully calibrated and augmented with methodical decisions on when and how to implement the new security processes and deploy the new security technologies. Adopting the zero-trust principle improves the management of security risks to deliver a secure network and services.

However, the capability to implement a zero-trust architecture also depends heavily on the technologies, prioritizations, and policies considered. Successfully implementing zero trust can be a cornerstone of a holistic defense strategy to manage the risk of the infrastructure that has migrated to zero-trust and the infrastructure that hasn’t, both.

While this transition towards zero-trust is a major change in the telecom industry, 5G’s built-in compatibility with the zero-trust architecture will make it easier to define security practices and strategies applicable in different scenarios. As of now, the new functionalities and requirement specifications align with many zero-trust elements. This should help drive up the confidence of successful 5G implementations without worries over security concerns clouding the benefits. That is great news for the telecom sector and the world at large.

The telecommunications industry is responsible for keeping the world connected. Telecom operators build, operate, and manage the complex network infrastructures required for all communications. Obviously, these networks deal with enormous amounts of sensitive data. This makes them attractive targets for attacks from malicious entities. The World Economic Forum in its Global Risks Report 2019, reported that the risk of cyber-attacks was among the top 5 fastest growing threats in public perception.

Telecom operators need to arm themselves against this growing risk. This post is an attempt to drive that point home by looking at where the threats could emerge from and their possible impact!

Telecommunications providers are under fire from two sides:

1. They face direct attacks from cybercriminals intent on breaching their organization and network operations
2. Indirect attacks from those in pursuit of their subscribers.

Main Network Security Threats Include:

Supply Chain Threats

As theGSMA has also said, telecom operators rely on numerous external suppliers to deliver infrastructure, products, and services. It represents a complex supply chain where downstream links inherent risks and vulnerabilities. Attackers need not address their planned target directly. In several cases, they can achieve their aim by compromising the supply chain where it is least secure.

Instances of supply chain threats are common including tampering with chipsets,vendors releasing devices in an insecure state<, and government decisions impacting supply chain resilience. This highlights the significance of understanding how products are developed and introduced into the ecosystem and managed throughout their lifecycle. The software supply chain is arguably more complicated. According to the 2018 evSecOps Community Survey, there was a 55% increase in breaches caused by vulnerable open-source software.

A failure to secure the supply chain can result in erosion of brand and trust, regulatory action, and high costs to the operator. The onus is on telecom operators to examine the products, toolsets, and technologies that form a part of their infrastructure from the security perspective.

Data Privacy

Mobile Network Operators specifically and telecom operators, in general, must gather, process, and store customer data to operate efficiently. Privacy concerns have triggered onerous regulations like GDPR in several locations. An inability to understand these laws or poor implementation can curb the flow of data and curtail the operator’s overall view of their network. Obviously, this can trigger inefficiencies for the network and create openings for attackers to go undetected, and pose a threat to the privacy and security of citizen’s data.

Such a failure to consider consumer privacy, regardless of legislative requirements, can also result in stiff fines, penal action, and even a brand-killing backlash, as seen with the LocationSmart service in the US.

Signaling Threats

As those in the telecom sector know, a signaling exchange establishes/maintains a communication channel or session on mobile telecommunications networks and assigns resources, and manages networks universally. 2/3G leverages SS7 and SIGTRAN, while 4G depends on Diameter. All generations employ SIP and GTP. Several essential services, such as short messaging service (SMS), are managed by these protocols.

While tried, tested, and trusted, many of these protocols are dated. They were often applied without an authority model but depended on implicit trust within a closed industry. Now look at the inherent insecurity of this approach in the context of the role in operating several network functions, and it will be clear that any security threats identified against these services will have a high impact. Many will remember that in 2017 an incident in Washington DC, close to the White House, saw attackers use a fake base station and SS7 access to obtain subscriber information.

Predominantly these attacks target consumers and cause a breach of privacy with all the ramifications of potential regulatory action and reputational damage.

Cloud Threats

The network perimeter is blurring, and the cloud is being regularly leveraged to facilitate operators’ operations. The cloud is where network, storage, and compute resources often reside these days. And yes, an external supplier manages all these applications.

The loss of direct control of such critical operations may diminish the operator’s level of control over the network performance, optimization, data, and quality of services. The operator also loses the capability to assess and alleviate security threats directly. They are forced to depend solely on contractual or service level agreements with the cloud provider. Seen in that light, cloud services pose a potential combination of risks concerning network availability, supply chain, and privacy.

The IoT Threats

This year has seen a major IoT thrust. And obviously, security threats are emerging. The industry has identified that several customer device manufacturers have little consideration for, or competency in, security. It’s not uncommon for them to hand over the accountability to secure the device to the uneducated customer without security instructions. These devices, when deployed, are also attached to the operator’s network. Attacking the network by leveraging these devices could potentially harm operators.

Most IoT threats come from attackers exploiting factory default settings or poorly configured devices. IoT devices are a desirable target. The significant volume of devices means many potential access points. The attacker can employ the same technique to attack different devices regardless of their primary function, leading to a large surface subject to attack with minimal effort. For eg., in 2016 the Mirai botnet, the mother of many modern IoT botnets, hijacked over 600,000 devices. The initial attack took down OVH hosting and DynDNS services.

Of course, in these cases, attackers don’t want to disrupt the network. They desire continued access to the network for information disclosure and that’s just as disruptive in the long run.

Human Threats

Having said all that, it’s unfortunately true that network attacks usually succeed due to human nature. Humans make mistakes; these are often taken advantage of by attackers to gain a foothold into the operator’s network. Employees may become disgruntled, leading to a desire to attack the operators. Internal human threats come in many forms, some malicious, others not.

Device Threats

Not all customers comprehend the threats their devices bring to the operator and network ecosystem. However, suppliers of the device, software (app) developers, and over the top service (OTT) providers are aware of the threat to the device. Because of the long-term nature of such customer relationships, several operators take over and address several device threats.

In April 2018, the WikiLeaks hacktivist group leaked a suite of hacking tools believed to belong to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The leak exemplified to what extent nation-state level technologies are thought to be used in the fifth generation of cyber-attacks.Nokia reports that Android devices were responsible for 47.15% of the observed malware infections in 2019 and are the most targeted OS.

Why Revenue Protection Becomes a Mandate?

In this competitive world, revenue leakage is one of the most significant worries affecting telcos around the world. For operators, who are also distressed by deteriorating margins from the conventional voice business, protecting the existing revenue sources becomes crucial. Over the years, several research reports have highlighted the massive loss to the industry due to inadequate fraud protection and poor revenue assurance processes.

The critical challenge with revenue protection is the long gap between revenue leakage detection and fixing it. Considering the enormous volume of transactions produced in the present-day customer-centric world, telcos cannot afford such gaps. With the new problems brought by IP networks and the sophisticated interconnection frauds, detecting, and redressing the glitches becomes even more important.

Obviously, lessening the leakage exposure time can result in significant savings. Also, revenue protection is linked to multiple processes, including data collection, billing, settlement, and operations. Thus, coherent strategies for revenue protection can give telcos increased visibility into all aspects of subscriber data and help them to improve the Quality of Service (QoS). This could help improve the subscriber experience and drive up loyalty.

Subscriber management is a crucial element of revenue protection as it facilitates operators to handle customer attrition. The operators require to have visibility into subscriber’s usage and billing patterns. Such insights will enable them to introduce the right mix of services that enhance customer value and ARPU. Subscriber management proves crucial to remove billing errors and disputes.
Vulnerabilities exist on several levels in the telecom landscape: hardware, software, and human, and attacks can come from many directions. Telecom operators need to start considering security as a process that encompasses threat prediction, prevention, detection, response, and investigation. Intuitive revenue protection systems can further help in stemming the tide of lost revenue by making it possible for operators to view all potential revenue leakages in real-time for every process.

A comprehensive, multi-layered security solution based on the latest technology is a vital element to achieve this, but it is not sufficient on its own. The technology becomes a vital first step that must be followed by collaboration, employee education, and shared intelligence.

The telecom industry is evolving rapidly. Changing conditions have compelled telecom operators to shun their legacy business models and adopt new ways of operating. One such model catching the eye is the telecom service hub.

To keep pace with changes, telecom operators worldwide have started coming together strategically to form a telecom hub that connects their local service providers. The goal is to become global carriers that carry internal data and signaling traffic worldwide.

A telecom hub is cost-efficient as it reduces the costs of maintenance, deployment, and hardware. But more importantly, it gives them a wider reach to global subscribers. They are also able to implement global security practices and innovate more frequently to meet the subscribers’ changing demands.

No wonder the telecom hub is rapidly becoming a preferred model for operators.

However, a telecom hub can function seamlessly when there is trust among the different operators and local service providers. That’s possible only through improved security and concerted efforts to prevent revenue leakage.

Let’s see how the telecom hub can achieve these goals.

How Can Telecom Hubs Prevent Revenue Leakage And Build Trust?

According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) study, around 1.74% of global frauds were telecom frauds.

Some of the common frauds that occurred in the industry included traffic pumping schemes, vishing calls, Wangari, International Revenue Sharing Fraud (IRSF), and call forwarding fraud. However, one of the leading factors for revenue leakage is the Application to Person (A2P) SMS. Companies send SMS to subscribers across the world to promote their offerings. However, a study by Mobilesquared revealed that out of the 2 trillion SMS sent by 2024, around one-quarter of them would be sent via grey routes. If this occurs, the telecom industry will be staring at a cumulative revenue loss of $37.1 billion.

Grey routes are not legal as direct routes and this has implications in the telecom hubs discussion too. In direct routes, the telecom hubs have conversion platforms. The operators have complete transparency on SMS delivery. However, when an SMS passes through a grey route, the operator and the company that sent the SMS lose track of it. The message passes through legal and illegal routes exposing the SMS to security risks. That apart, the operators also lose on the critical interconnect fees. Eventually, the SMS sent is delivered late or not delivered at all, this hurting the cause of the business that sent the messages in the first place. Also, given that grey routes fail to obey the rules and regulations between operators, there is a risk of trust deterioration with the telecom operator too.

Mobile operators earn a significant chunk of their revenue from SMS. Hence, plugging this revenue leakage is critical.

The perfect antidote to grey route messaging is SMS firewall.

An SMS firewall helps telecom operators prevent fraudulent SMS activities. It can be beneficial for various purposes.

It ensures that the subscribers do not receive any fake, spoofed, or spam messages and protects them from security breaches.

It closely monitors every SMS to check its source address, destination address, and the route that’s used to deliver the message. It ensures that there is no A2P bypass, global title bypass, or any other illegal bypass.

The firewalls can also be customized for different partners in the hub. Operators can customize the firewall rule for specific partners, income traffic sources, and sender IDs.

Most importantly, it ensures that every SMS terminating at the operator’s network is charged correctly. It helps the operators plug the revenue leakage and maximize their profits by identifying untapped sources of revenue.

SMS firewall has become so important that it is expected to grow into a $3 billion market by 2025.

Conclusion

The telecom industry is critical for a country’s economic progress. Sadly, as the telecom industry progresses, the incidents of fraud will also increase. Hence, the onus lies upon the telecom hub to establish strict measures to prevent revenue leakages. Fraudulent messages will break the subscribers’ trust and damage the operators’ reputations in the telecom hub. As the number of A2P SMS increases over the next few years, telecom operators will have to take the lead and work in collaboration to monetize it. To combat such telecom risks, the telecom operators must work with a trusted telecom solution provider who has the right capabilities, expertise, and technologies to prevent losses.

Globe Teleservices is at the forefront in providing revenue enhancement solutions to telecom operators. Our SMS firewall is an intelligent system that’s built on AI and ML. It checks for unwanted content such as fake or spoofed messages, spam, etc., and filters it. The firewall also identifies and blocks the grey routes to ensure that the SMS traffic is directed through the legal routes and the operators receive the agreed fees. As telecom operators examine solutions like telecom hubs, it’s only apt that they focus on well-rounded solutions that provide utility, functionality, and security for everyone in the ecosystem.