dtac, in collaboration with Global Wholesale, has increased their monetization of incoming SMS traffic tenfold through taking control of grey routes into their networks.
Not monetizing on SMS traffic
Currently, most Telenor Business Units are missing out on additional SMS revenues. Up to several hundred millions NOK per year on existing traffic within the Group are not obtained due to accepting grey routes into their networks.
Through a joint effort between Global Wholesale and each BU, new revenues are secured for the BUs by taking control and monetizing on existing SMS traffic, and at the same time, ensuring that our customers experience a more reliable delivery of messages.
Global Wholesale has through Telenor Global Services, been a SMS Hub provider for most of the BUs for a long time. However, the development in the SMS market is that more and more messages are being sent from an application to a person (A2P), containing commercial or practical information such as order confirmations, travel itineraries and PIN codes. The challenge is that a lot of the messages enter Telenor’s networks as grey traffic, where the sender is exploiting the mutual forgiveness clause and is not charged for the messages. Mutual forgiveness is a bilateral agreement between operators based on the expectation that person-to-person traffic both ways are the same. To be able to charge other operators a reasonable cost for A2P messages the traffic has to be monitored and controlled in a structured way.
Monetizing on SMS traffic
dtac experienced high volumes of messages coming into their network through these grey channels and showed a clear interest in controlling and monetizing this SMS traffic. Being dtac’s signaling provider, Global Wholesale was able to analyze dtac’s messaging traffic, and as a result it was decided to act on the revenue potential in late 2014.
After implementing measures to filter and control the SMS traffic, the monetization has increased more than ten times. And there is still potential to secure more growth in these new revenues.
Success through solid collaboration between Group and dtac
dtac’s International Business team has been the key interface with Global Wholesale, but the success of the project has been dependent on good cooperation also with other teams in dtac. Bilal Kazmi, Head of International Business in dtac, says, “In terms of visible results and short term profitability, this is one of the more successful projects I have been involved in with experts from the Group Units.”
Group to assist more BUs
The messaging team in Global Wholesale is already in dialogue with several other BUs, sharing key insights and best practices from their cooperation with dtac. Kjetil Hanshus, Head of IPX Interconnect in Global Wholesale says, “Our mission for Global Wholesale is to create value for the BUs. This feedback from dtac means a lot to us. However, I believe we are only scratching the surface of the value potential within interconnect and roaming for Telenor as a group. So I am eager to get going with all BUs of Telenor.”
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Photo caption: Members of the joint team from dtac and Global Wholesale. From left to right: Yuttachai Jancharoen, Bilal Kazmi, Bunyapa Sunondharom, Marianne Moslet, Suchantana Pongpattarin, Napassakan Bunyawatwiwat, Tor Olve Andreassen and Ole Petter Oksne.