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APAC’s bright mobile SMS future or how to make an operator’s life easier
Publication: 02.10.2007 by Roland Föller, Global Product Manager for MACH SMS
Asia-Pacific is still one of the few surviving high-growth mobile markets at a time when the cellular industry is fast approaching saturation globally. China and India are exempt from saturation as without peering, these two large markets are both are primed for continued steep growth due to their significant population growth rates and relatively low penetration rates. China is reaching around 500 million connections these days and offers tremendous room for additional expansion. India has also skyrocketed because of exceptionally strong economic growth.
The SMS “champion” however is the Philippines; counting monthly SMS traffic of more than 800 messages per customer. While mobile messaging has been seeing explosive growth worldwide, no region has seen greater growth than Asia-Pacific. In this region, text messages have become a part of everyday life, with billions being sent each day.
One reason for this is because consumers are highly price sensitive and use text messaging as an alternative to voice, due to it being more economical. Of the various data services available, SMS accounts for approximately 75–80% of non-voice service revenues worldwide. More than 4/5 of this traffic is SMS person-to-person communication.
As of this personal communication is not limited to their own network borders and operators have to implement and extend their SMS inter-working relationships between each other. Previously the approach has been to set-up bilateral agreements; however this method is very time and effort consuming and therefore not appropriate for addressing all global mobile operators. Operators have had to offer attractive prices which in turn, have provided a springboard for creating very fast growth in demand within the APAC region.
Some of the challenges that operators are now facing are: ‘How can SMS inter-working effectively be set-up?’, ‘How can international SMS traffic be controlled and reported?’ and ‘How can we receive revenue from this traffic?’
As the new GSMA SMS hubbing model will definitely help mobile operators to overcome the current drawbacks of this bilateral approach, there will however always be a need for managing existing inter-working relationships in addition to new upcoming hubbing connections.
MACH has therefore invented an all-inclusive service, MACH SMS solution. It allows mobile operators to enlarge their international SMS coverage, obtain significant reporting tools and receive first-class Financial Clearing service for bilateral agreements, all at the same time.
The key benefits of the integrated one-stop-shop, MACH SMS Solution, are primarily:
• Extended international SMS coverage
MACH’s SMS hub will enable network operators to send and receive SMS to multiple destinations globally, rapidly establishing inter-working relationships by using only just one network configuration, one testing process, one contract and just one financial relation.
• Reduced complexity and efforts for handling SMS financial settlement
Inter-working clearing and settlement is a complex and resource-hungry process which can tie up a disproportionate amount of staff. This becomes even more prominent when considering SMS traffic and volume. MACH’s SMS solution automates this process and improves efficiency and accuracy. As a result of this, the potential for manual errors will be minimised and key resources can be assigned to other tasks.
• Transparency achieved on overall international SMS business
Currently, various independent tools/systems are only available (if at all) with several weeks delay in a very raw and simple format. MACH’s SMS Solution overcomes this lack of transparency and non-availability through advanced data warehouse tools which provide transparency to SMS traffic/volumes.
• Reduced revenue leakage
Further elaboration with the comprehensive reports can reveal particular SMS interconnection partners for which new individual bilateral agreements may be applicable. These agreements will further enable mobile operators to contract and invoice high SMS volume operators to generate additional revenues.
With this, MACH welcomes DiGi Telecommunications SDN BHD in joining MACH SMS Solution alongside their existing clientele.
www.mach.com
