International A2P Traffic Monetization Challenges & Resolution

Abstract

Telenor Pakistan is the 2nd biggest Telecom operator in Pakistan which is operating since last 16 years countrywide. It comes from Telenor Group which is based in Norway and has business units across Europe and Asia. We will see further details about Telenor Pakistan, its operations, revenue, strengths, and weaknesses in report but let’s first look at the scope of this project. Digitalization being at the center stage of the technical big bang naturally brings digital connectivity of consumers with enterprises and value chains. It then brings into perspective the wide range of possible connectivity options with these digital platforms. When we talk about options we talk about devices, OS, browsers and then OTTs via which the world can connect digitally. Being at Telenor Pakistan the mobile devices are automatically part of our interest and scope. We need to see how we can add to the value chain and contribute to connecting our consumers to a wide range of digital platforms via their mobile phones. Our responsibility is not only to give them good connectivity via mobile data but to make it safe for them. With mobile device there is a natural identification of each consumer with their unique MSISDN and their IMSI. With this advantage and spread of access, Telecom Operators have an unchallenged advantage which can still be leveraged while the voice and P2P SMS market is on a decline. With advancement in digital outfit, enterprises started using cheap SMS channel to authenticate customer as it is a safe way to interact with customers and authenticate them on digital apps with a good customer experience. We at Telenor group realized the fact that we have a huge consumer base which these enterprises are benefiting from with prime customer satisfaction and immaculate access to the devices for authentication and other actions but with expense of next to nothing. So, Telenor group took an initiative to channelize this traffic and then monetize it. Our project had following phases: Phase 1: Collection of international A2P traffic via legal partners Phase 2: Monetization of international A2P traffic via SMS Firewall We divided the 2nd phase of project into further two phases: Phase 1a: International terminating SMS (MT SMS) traffic routing to SMS Firewall Phase 1b: Local A2P traffic routing to SMS Firewall In my business project 1, I covered the collection of International A2P traffic via SMS Firewall. In this report, we will discuss about the challenges faced in the monetization of international A2P traffic. We will discuss the availability of grey routes, role of aggregators and approach taken by Telenor group to counter such leakages in A2P revenue stream.