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.