Reading Eric’s post on ‘dismal SMS forecasts’ made me think about the ways that SMS has taken up my time in the past few years. I have seen the following cases during the past 2 years:
- A2P messages to German numbers which were sent by prepaid SIMs roaming in the EU that exploited Roam Like Home in order to bypass termination rates.
- Spurts of SMS’s (around 20 to 30) being sent by subscribers in a few minutes to number ranges of small island states (Nauru, Fiji, Polynesia). These are usually triggered by clicking on links that promise some reward or prize.
- Lots of subscribers exploiting unlimited plans to send commercial bulk SMS’s.
- An increase in scams with SMS’s providing a link to verify identification and make a payment for a ‘package that is waiting’ or some type of emergency that you have to deal with.
- Banks moving from SMS to in-app notifications for payment and ID verification.
There’s a lot of garbage on networks that telcos cannot seem to rein in. At the same time everyone is using OTT messaging apps to talk to friends and family, sharing rich content, photos and graphics.
In the meantime, the generic Google messages app has taken it upon itself to check for spam SMS and places it in a separate folder while notifying you. A long time ago there was a serious problem with spam email, which new email clients have managed to clean out. The same has been done on smartphones with the client app taking charge of what networks are allowing. Hence, Eric’s comment: “telcos increasingly look like the water and energy utilities they have long tried to differentiate themselves from”. Telcos are slowly but surely becoming the providers of a service and nothing more. Maybe they were never more than that.
In related news, the GSMA and Google are also pushing RCS messaging which is hailed as the future of messaging. It provides all the benefits of OTT messaging services without having to register or use a third party app. RCS can become a default service, despite Apple’s resistance. Such a service could save telcos from the SMS mess and the challenge posed by OTT alternatives. However it would also mean that telcos would have to rethink the revenue stream, including who pays them and how they will be paid. In this case, the service will become oriented towards business customers.
