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Operators’ core revenues have been shrinking since 2012. Voice margins are decreasing, and SMS messaging has also suffered an impact from OTT messaging apps. SMS market has survived the initial shock caused by IM applications. Moreover, SMS traffic is now growing because the use of SMS has become very popular among enterprises. A2P messaging market is booming and is estimated to be worth $70.32 billion by 2020.
In recent years OTTs have disrupted telecom industry causing a downturn in P2P SMS volumes. Operators’ core revenues have decreased, with both P2P SMS and voice traffic going down. Hence, MNOs and voice players have been searching for a new cash cow, which they found in a fruitful A2P SMS, also known as business messaging. Although popular chat applications like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have been threatening the messaging business, something interesting has happened. Not only that SMS survived the initial shock, but it flourished! SMS traffic is now growing because the use of SMS has become prevalent among enterprises. Moreover, OTTs have become the biggest SMS traffic generators, as millions of OTP messages (One Time Password) are sent each day. This is a phenomenal opportunity for mobile operators to leverage this new OTTs’ SMS revenue stream and compensate part of their profitability loses.
On June 17 this year Google announced it is officially rolling out its RCS Chat in the UK and France. In the UK, the service officially became available on 28 June for some users. After this news broke, RCS became the main buzz word. However, RCS or Rich Communication Services is not a novelty. RCS protocol dates back to 2007. In 2008 GCM Association took it over, while in 2016 it became an agreed standard when GCMA published the Universal Profile on RCS. The Universal Profile is a set of features and technical enablers built to facilitate global operator deployment of RCS. RCS is a new messaging standard aimed to enable the industry to deliver a consistent and more advanced texting experience for billions of consumers worldwide. The goal is to have most smartphones with a built-in advanced messaging that features read receipts, the capability to send high-resolution images and videos, typing indicators, animated stickers, better group texting, etc. Similar to popular chat apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, and others. In other words, RCS is the protocol intended to supersede the SMS. This protocol should provide improved messaging. To put it simply, RCS is enriched SMS.
As technology continues to advance and with OTT players constantly on the rise, certain services and software inevitably become obsolete. How should telco businesses and service providers evolve to stay relevant and cope with the ever-changing trends? What are the market gaps that will surface when 5G and giant cloud techs finally hit the trade? The editorial team at Telecoms World Asia had the opportunity to interview Fabrizio Salanitri, the CEO of HORISEN. He will be sharing about the evolution of the telco industry, the challenges that communication service providers face today, and what to look forward to at Telecoms World Asia 2020.
Each industry has specific terminology. The SMS business is no exception. We have decided to share with you 50 most commonly used SMS industry terms in the form of an SMS glossary.
More and more businesses in all industry verticals have started employing SMS messaging for their customer relationship management. From two-factor authentication (2FA), high-volume alerts, notifications, appointment reminders, to all sorts of SMS marketing campaigns, SMS has become the most popular way to reach out to customers and gain their attention. This messaging is also known as application-to-person, or A2P messaging. Others call it enterprise or business messaging. No matter how you name it, what is important here is that SMS is now the most desired communication channel among brands. Industries such as banking, financial institutions, e-commerce, healthcare, and entertainment are widely using A2P SMS.
Mobile marketing has proved its importance. Today more and more companies and brands are using mobile marketing to reach out to customers and keep them in the loop. The most commonly used mobile marketing tactic is SMS marketing. It is the oldest form of mobile marketing simply because the first mobile phones in the 1990s were able to send/receive only the SMS. So, marketers had just this one tool available to use – hence the SMS marketing was born. But, mobile technology progressed tremendously, and today mobile phones have so many different capabilities that we can freely say we are carrying small computers in our pockets. Nevertheless, SMS marketing is still the most popular form of mobile marketing because it’s easy, cheap, fast and provides great ROI.
1. How SMS Marketing starts? SMS marketing starts when a mobile user sends a keyword as a message to a specific shortcode. These type of messages are called MO messages (Mobile Originated message). Here is an example: Text START to 8888 for our weekly list of special offers! The moment the system receives the message (subscription) containing the keyword, the phone number from which this message was sent automatically goes into a database and triggers an automated response – a new text message sent back to the user. This message is also called the MT message (Mobile Terminated message). In this case, the message would contain a list of all available special offers of the week.
First, let’s familiarise with the term. What is SMS marketing? SMS marketing is a permission-based marketing technique that uses SMS (Short Message Service) to send promotional messages and share special offers or company information with a large group of people quickly and easily. This is done by sending SMS messages from a company to a consumer. The other terms used are mobile marketing or text messaging marketing.