A fairy tale called Messaging

How does Global Wholesale contribute with direct revenue for Telenor?
Get the insights from Moosa Abid Babar, Head of Messaging and Digital Solutions in Global Wholesale

Four years ago, Global Wholesale launched a new platform to deliver SMS technology for Telenor Group. What was the idea behind this?  

Moosa Abid Babar, Head of Messaging & Digital Solutions

The basic idea is that Global Wholesale serves as a One Touch Point between Business Units (BUs)/telcos and the digital content providers and brands for delivering SMS to end users. The global setup is assisting the Business Units in the end-to-end management of commercial, coverage, quality and financial aspects related to this area. Also, in order to ensure increased monetization benefits and control on spam/fraud SMS, Global Wholesale has assisted in deploying SMS Firewall solutions in the BUs along with Business Analytics and Managed Services. This has contributed towards the BUs to increase their revenues and improve end user experience. Global Wholesale has assisted the BUs to increase their revenues by 120% on annual basis on top of their existing SMS business.

As part of our global and centralized setup, we have been able to connect 300+ enterprises and brands through our partner network and we currently managing over 2 billion messages per year. The key success criteria for such a setup is to create scale across multiple Business Units by combining volumes across the Group and ensuring that all traffic is channelized through a single and authorized route.

Below you can find Telenor’s role in the messaging eco system:

Why has it been such an important step?  

SMS is still seen as the most simple and reliable way for enterprises to reach the customers and with the world becoming more digital, the need to enable digital content through SMS technology is increasing. I am talking about A2P SMS (Application to person messages). Those are messages originated by computer or application and intended for delivery to the subscribers of MNOs. A2P SMS is typically used by enterprise to communicate and share information with their customers, for example, two-factor authentication for login purposes, bank balance alerts, retail order or delivery confirmation, appointment reminders, promotional messages and offers. A2P messaging market potential is estimated to reach $34 billion globally in 2024, rising from $18 billion in 2020 (Source: MobileSquared).

We in Telenor wanted to be part of this revenue stream.

 

What are the plans for this product going forward?

We want to evolve this product to increase its usability and ensure that our brands and enterprises still see SMS as a reliable channel. In this regard, we believe that continuous efforts to keep the channel clean is very important to maintain trust with our customers.

In addition, we want to introduce new use cases such that enterprises can find other methodologies to interact with end customers part from simple text SMS. This shall include Person to Application (P2A) messaging, discount mechanism on promotional and marketing messages, Phone number verification (PNV) and eventual evolution to Rich Communication Services (RCS). Lastly, we want to serve guidance to our Business units on pricing of this product area such that it is maintained at a reasonable level for which the enterprises maintain their willingness to pay.