Digital Lifescapes

There has been a significant evolution in the range of use cases for Application to Person (A2P) messaging in recent years. Historically, A2P was used for alerts and as a billing mechanism for simple content and services -- for one-off downloads or actions, and for recurring payments. The latter use case has declined markedly in the past 5 years, due to a combination of the transition to an app-based economy largely driven by card billing and by regulatory action against fraudsters. A2P Messaging Market Development The volume of A2P messaging is expected to increase by 20 percent over the next 5 years to more than 2.7 trillion by 2022 -- that's up from 2.1 trillion in 2017, according to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research. The analyst claimed that this growth would be driven by an increase in automated marketing, payments and authentication messages. Note, A2P is defined as an automated SMS message sent from an enterprise to an end user. The research unc...

Mobile network service provider revenue loss from 'grey route' application-to-person (A2P) traffic will amount to $62 billion over the next 6 years, despite the increased deployment of security measures, according to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research. Historically, the A2P service offering was used for mobile alerts or as a billing methodology and transport for simple content and services -- both for one-off downloads or actions (such as voting) and for recurring transaction payments. The study discovered that the high levels of grey route traffic -- essentially A2P messages masquerading as P2P (Person to Person) messages and delivered via non-interconnected routes -- could be attributed by the scale of the price differential between A2P and P2P. Mobile Messaging Market Development Today, the trend has become more pronounced as mobile network operators have offered high-volume, low cost SMS bundles to cope with the challenge of Over-the-Top (OTT) mes...