Operators Need to Adapt Quickly to a Changing Environment
As discussed in our previous blog, decreasing margins in the wholesale market are forcing operators to automate their business processes to gain more efficiency. New partnerships, content, technologies, and even new business models are creating greater complexity and changing the way operators do business with each other.
Many operators wish to increase enterprise business through A2P messaging. A2P messaging has rapidly offset the decline in traditional P2P messaging, making SMS an emerging industry again. However, operators face steep competition and pressure on SMS termination fees from messaging aggregators, who can offer enterprise customers more comprehensive messaging support through CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) platforms. This brings along numerous challenges associated with the value of their networks, subscriber experience, and, ultimately, hinders their ability to develop new business models when going for a race-to-the-bottom pricing model. This has forced operators to re-evaluate their enterprise market strategy, which includes their ability to adapt and change with the market and business conditions.
Simplifying A2P for Enterprises
TOMIA’s A2P Messaging solution solves the complexity and operational inefficiencies inherent to this market, which allows seamless onboarding of enterprises and easy access to service. Operators’ common approach towards the A2P market starts by developing new commercial models for their enterprise customers and terminating more SMS messages to their own subscribers, and then, trading with key partners for the off-net traffic. Some of TOMIA’s customers who started participating more in the A2P ecosystem claimed 2-digit revenue growth within the first year.
Enabling Enterprises to Connect Mobile Applications with Voice and Messaging
Another growth area is the API (Application Programming Interface) business through virtual cloud numbers. With this service, operators can address their enterprise customers by enabling mobile applications to connect directly to the voice and messaging telecom ecosystem. Historically, operators have managed cloud numbers and orders through offline and in-house systems. However, this approach poses many issues in terms of scalability and operational support. It is still heavily time-consuming for pricing teams to compare multiple price offers for cost calculations and creation of customer final price lists, as well as having the proper visibility on revenue and profitability impact.
Based on discussions with our customers, we estimate the cloud numbers’ potential market value to be $750M. TOMIA offers its Cloud Numbers solution to help operators to monetize their number inventory by selling local numbers, mobile numbers, toll-free and non-geographic numbers worldwide. It helps them to compete within the mobile application and OTT ecosystem, with fully automated routing provisioning upon order receipt, rather than waiting for weeks in traditional provisioning processes.
The interconnect market has evolved from international wholesale voice to inter-carrier relationships, providing additional value-added services to serve enterprises’ needs. Carriers are actively seeking new ways to monetize and execute their business strategies, in which efficiency in operations and cost controls remain critical. In other words, it's about promoting business decisions in the form of contracts and commercial arrangements and executing them through intelligent routing and effective billing.
TOMIA keeps pace with the interconnect industry evolution and enterprise customer demands through flexible and automated services. To learn more about how TOMIA can help operators to execute their own A2P and cloud numbers strategies, contact us at: tomia.communications@tomiaglobal.com
