Big Data empowered messaging How to boost telco legacy services profitability?
Messaging: the other way. You said Big Data? Celebrating its 23 rd year of existence, Text Messaging/SMS may be today considered as a legacy technology, like any circuit switched-based services (e.g voice). Yet, despite the ongoing trend in revenue decrease for legacy services, operators have to maintain investments to keep their service up and running continuously, across all network generations. Messaging evolution is still unclear from a service layer perspective (IM, RCS or any other telco OTT like initiative). However, basic SMS will be maintained for a very long time despite the increasing competition of OTT messaging as market size still reaches $100B per year*, and SMS still has stunning advantages over alternative OTT/Internet technologies. Telcos solution providers may base their offer on RCS or on a very low price strategy, but they prove insufficient to best address messaging market potential. Another approach is possible. Main Big Data drivers enable Telco's to explore new revenues streams and to optimize QoS and costs (e.g network planning etc.). What if legacy telco services like messaging could directly benefit from Big Data capabilities, for an increased long term unbeatable profitability? The aim of this paper is to share another vision of the messaging market through our experience: Introducing Big Data empowered messaging. *: CFCA Informa Telecom and Media
Text Messaging is not dead! Foreseeing a soon-to-be dead SMS becomes commonplace sometimes for relevant reasons (Absurdly complex operators tariff plans, lack of feature compared with OTT etc), but also because in a fast-evolving environment, services are considered obsolete, at the very moment they are actually peaking. Taking a step back and looking at real and tangible market figures may provide a different perspective, more inspiring for Telcos messaging strategy in the coming years. The discrete rise of A2P What analysts call the Person to Person/P2P messaging- is just a portion of the SMS market. The other part includes all the SMS notifications you receive after subscribing to a service, making a payment etc., called Application to Peer/A2P or Enterprise SMS. If SMS P2P revenues are declining, A2P SMS is an opportunity that operators are discretely grasping. Despite the challenges ahead, an ideal messaging solution would enable operators to fully exploit the A2P opportunity, by answering to the technical needs like consolidation, future proofing, value generating features and the business needs (need to best combat fraud, and reduce operational expenditures).
SMS: the ever lasting benefits Operators have a prevalent position, as they only can deliver SMS. As a consequence, operators are maintaining SMS service across all generations of networks. As an example, 4G network standards have implemented SMS delivery functionality in MME (Sgs for CS fallback, and Sgd interface for devices supporting 4G only). Operators ensure excellent reliability in messaging delivery, across all countries and operators. What can we learn from end-users? From an end-user perspective, Text SMS is perceived more reliable and secured. Thus for sensitive information (password, bank notifications, etc.), an overwhelming 96% of them would rather receive notifications through SMS than through any other messaging system. From a marketer and content provider standpoint, the choice of SMS is obvious. When launching marketing campaigns, a company can be fairly certain to reach any customer via SMS thanks to its universality (device agnosticity), its reliability and its instant-reach nature (statistics show 98% of users read their SMS less than 15 minutes after receiving it). Nowadays, no other messaging technology enables this!
TODAY S CHALLENGES FOR OPERATORS
Optimized costs & Future-proof infrastructures In order to maintain an optimized level of profitability, operators are facing three main challenges: Maintain legacy infrastructure up and running while continuously lowering their operational expenses through consolidation, negotiation rounds with legacy suppliers Future proof messaging infrastructure Operators need to maintain messaging services across next generation networks evolutions - 4G and IMS based services evolutions (drivers may be VoLTE or communication offload over wifi). Messaging infrastructures shall be ready for virtualization and compliant with SDN standard Keep enough flexibility Enhance control of Content Providers/3 rd parties to maximize revenues, while exploring new revenue streams for SMS like M2M (need of new standard interfaces implementation) for MTC (Machine Type Communication) Overlay infrastructure: the smartest answer? Overlay networks enable to maximize profitability for messaging streams that are still generating revenues with no impact of the legacy, known for being costly, very long projects with huge complexity. Overlay infrastructures shall therefore be based on different technology approach. Why you should invest in a messaging overlay network? 1 Embeds more flexibility and features to best address A2P market opportunity 2 Is prepared for next generation networks and is IMS ready 3 Is ready for next Industry requirements opportunities, e.g. for SMS in M2M
Fraud: stop revenue leakages! $46B Telcos revenues loss due to Fraud every year * $23B Messaging revenues loss due to Fraud from 2013 to 2018 * Fraud impact on A2P messaging revenues deeply affects operators in certain regions (e.g LATAM), representing tens to hundreds millions dollars loss for Tier-1 operators. Fraudsters imagination is unlimited and operators anti-fraud solutions are usually not flexible enough to adapt. Part of the Fraud remains undetected, or when it s known, operators usually may not have the ability to block it at early stage and to launch preventive actions. FRAUD CASES A2P Fraud P2P Fraud Spam & Scam Virus Abnormal Traffic Grey routes SIM boxes $ 23B estimated revenue leakage between 2013 & 2018* MO Spoofing MT Faking Grey routes SIM boxes Average 30% of operators revenue lost on terminating revenues* Lottery Scam 300M spams sent /day Induced costs (>$ 1M/attack) Brand image impact Android SMS worm OTA virus IMPACTS ON OPERATORS Flooding Repetition Brand image impact Abusive network usages Affected QoS SMS Firewalls are the standard solutions to block messaging Fraud and have proven efficient for certain kinds of Fraud like spamming. However it is clearly inefficient for advanced fraud patterns like IP based grey routes (SIM Boxes) which can only be detected through advanced analytic capabilities or with 3 rd party solution (Test Call Generators etc ). * CFCA -Communications Fraud Control Association * Source GSA Forum
The Big Data approach : SUBLIMATE THE EXISTING
Messaging market expects new rules There are obvious key benefits of Big Data empowered technology on legacy services, which can be reflected on both commercial and technical layers:
Sublimate traditional messaging Big data capabilities can sublimate traditional messaging features, and provide a pragmatic answer to today s operators challenges in maintaining optimal profitability on messaging services. Intersec Messaging Solution successfully addresses this by focusing on the following fields: Messaging Fraud Management System Intersec Messaging Solution embeds a unique consolidated Messaging Fraud Management System. It combines traditional Messaging Firewall capabilities with advanced real time Big Data analytics capabilities. Thus enabling the following main key benefits for Operators: Detect a much wider portfolio of fraudulent patterns Reduce time between detection and blocking rules implementation, significantly Counteract fraudsters imagination through a pragmatic and flexible analytics approach Operators can now detect advanced fraudulent patterns, and implement consequently the relevant blocking rules to protect their customers and sustainably reduce revenues leakages due to messaging Fraud. Operators implementing Fraud management systems to protect from messaging Fraud realized they were loosing above 80% of their messaging revenues. Combining flexible firewall and advanced analytics is a promising opportunity to reduce messaging Fraud losses and costs of Fraud
Unified reporting: easy! Reporting capabilities are required by different operators teams: Operation& Maintenance Customer Care, Marketing. Telco Value Added Services are usually made of silos, from different vendors. Obtaining a data rich consolidated reporting, that can transversally fulfill the needs of the operators, remains painful and sometimes an impossible challenge for operators. From painful reporting process To easy unified reporting SOME REAL KEY BENEFITS Consolidation: O&M, Business Reporting and Customer Care, all in one Empowerment: no more silos, all Business Units benefit from enriched information Monetization: Reporting services available to third parties
Simplify & future proof Operators legacy infrastructures evolutions has led to building new components on top of already existing network elements. Most of the situations result in operators getting complex silo infrastructures involving different vendors, with potential interoperability issues, and lack of agility. Content providers IP 3rd party VAS One consolidated framework A consolidated approach enables operators to reduce up to 50% of CAPEX and OPEX SS7 IP SMS-C MMS-C MSC HLR IMS Core OCS IN Consolidation enables getting rid of interoperability issues between traditional separated and vendor dependent core components. Service continuity towards network evolution is made less complex. Whether a message has to be delivered with SS7 or SIP(IMS network), now becomes a matter of software feature activation.
Intersec s Big Data empowered messaging Intersec s flexible architecture and messaging features consolidation capabilities enable operators to build a tailored and future proof overlay network to best address messaging Business profitability challenges. Big Data empowered messaging value proposition aims to provide operators with the last messaging infrastructure they will ever need to buy. About Intersec Leading provider of real-time telco Big Data processing software, Intersec designs innovative platforms converting Big Data into real time actionable assets. Intersec s award-winning products are designed to efficiently implement operator s loyalty & retention, value creation and cost optimization strategies. Through its disruptive technology, Intersec empowers mobile network operators with many value-creation business cases in the fields of Customer Experience Management, mass-scale LBS monetization and augmented messaging profitability. Acclaimed by 70+ references, Intersec technology enhances the experience of several hundred million subscribers worldwide and manages over a billion events day after day. www.intersec.com
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