July 2015

SMS Bypass Blocking: A Service that Protects & Maximizes A2P Revenue for Mobile Operators

interview with Claire Cassar

As a mobile operator revenue stream, SMS is a two-sided coin.

On one side is Person to Person (P2P) messaging, a business badly tarnished and declining due to major competition from Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, and several other OTT players offering free P2P alternatives.

But the flipside of SMS — Application to Person (A2P) SMS — glitters like gold thanks to global smartphone expansion. It’s a growing and profitable sector for mobile operators today because it’s used for all manner of enterprise-to-user communication. Banks, airlines, and on-line services (such as the Uber taxi) constantly use A2P to send notices, confirmations, or authentication messages to mobile subs.

So how big is this A2P market? Well, a recent research study by Ovum pegged annual A2P messaging volume at 1.8 trillion messages in 2014. And if an MNO earns an average 3 cents in revenue from each message, that equates to a nice $54 billion a year market for A2P.

Now such multi-billion dollar revenue streams need to be protected because they are a magnet for bypass fraudsters. Sure enough: operators today receive big volumes of “grey route” A2P messages — often bulk marketing messages — from senders who are try to sneak their messages in, even though the operator has no commercial agreements with them.

Well, luckily some clever solution vendors, such as Malta-based HAUD Systems, are stepping in to help operators filter out the fraudsters and maximize the revenue potential of their A2P platforms. We are now joined by HAUD’s CEO, Claire Cassar, who provides us with a comprehensive overview of the A2P revenue protection scene.

	Dan Baker: Claire, sounds like HAUD’s new fraud solution in A2P filtering and blocking is very timely. Can you briefly explain the history of how you got into this business?

Claire Cassar: Sure, Dan. We are a revenue assurance and fraud solutions team within Fortytwo Group, a group of companies primarily focused on messaging solutions in the electronic communications industry.

As A2P fraud problems started mushrooming, we realized in 2010 that a dedicated solution would become crucial. So we started developing a product and by 2011 we did our first proof of concept at Jersey Telecom, a small operator in the UK. They soon signed on for the solution and they remain a customer today.

I must say, back in 2012, it was tough getting mobile operators interested in investing to control A2P fraud. Funds for voice fraud and LTE networks constrained budgets quite a bit.

But this forced us to offer a more financially attractive solution. What we offer today is a CAPEX free, revenue share model. These options made it much easier for the operator to say “yes” because they have no upfront investment. Secondly, we take on the responsibility: unless we are successful, we don’t get paid from the incremental revenue they would make.

	Can you give us a feel for the A2P marketplace and the aggregators who do the essential enterprise-to-mobile-operator transport?

Well, there are about 40 to 50 aggregators of A2P traffic out there, and because entry is relatively easy, there’s considerable pressure on aggregators to perform and keep their prices low.

At the Tier 1 level, there are six to 10 aggregators and each of them approaches the A2P business with a very high level of professionalism. Then there are 15 to 20 Tier 2 and many Tier 3 players and below. Syniverse is perhaps the largest message aggregator. Other big players include MBlox, tyntec, CLX Networks, and Infobip as well as our sister company Fortytwo Telecom.

Enterprises and OTT players are eager to select the best carriers at the best prices for their A2P traffic. Remember, a large bank issuing credit cards needs to send SMS notices to customers who may be roaming around the world. So guaranteed global delivery is a growing concern for large enterprises, and to reach all corners of the world, it may need to split its SMS distribution among 4 or 5 aggregators.

One other market trend I think is significant: there seems to be a move towards greater quality in A2P. For instance, one of the larger firms, Dialog Communications, recently issued a press release saying they would not entertain any more grey route traffic and only do direct connections with operators.

	So how does your system work?

We work at the network level with the operators. Now we could offer a cloud solution, but because of security and privacy issues, operators prefer us to host the solution in-country within their own data center.

Our job is to control all incoming SMS traffic — from international, local or direct routes such as SMPP connections. All these routes feed into our central system where they are served by a series of software modules that handle the various traffic types.

The heart of our system is BulkGuard, a pattern recognition module that looks at SMS content to identify bulk messages. The system is set to read through all the messages in a particular timeframe. If it detects similar patterns or content in messages within that timeframe, it will aggregate those and send out a report to the user.

Once we do the filtering, we then pass the traffic to an SMS gateway where the operator determines the routes where all this A2P traffic should come from. And it’s at that point where our solution picks up the traffic again and determines if all the rules are being obeyed and the traffic is being steered properly. Finally, the traffic goes to the operator’s core network and the SMSC where the message is delivered to the end customer or consumer.

As you’d expect, the local fraud department can set its own rules in the system and can alert the user via email or SMS as certain thresholds are met. In this way, the system can be monitored 24/7 and requires less intervention at the NOC level so it can be more timely, effective and preemptive.

And it’s not fully automated: the human element is needed for fine-grain analysis of the contents to ensure that bank notifications and other legitimate A2P traffic is allowed through the network to the consumer.

	How much fraud are you seeing in the SMS traffic?

The everyday percentage is not that alarming. It’s maybe 1 to 2% in most networks that we’ve seen.

However, there are occasional spikes reaching 10% of the total volume. So if you’re a mobile operator with 50 million subscribers, that’s definitely alarming. It’s critical to stop the traffic immediately before it reaches the subscriber. Otherwise, the operator is likely to get many complaint calls in the call center — not to mention the damage to the brand image and possible subscriber churn.

To screen the traffic, we look for where the A2P traffic is coming from. And if it’s grey route traffic we block it because the operator cannot charge for it: either no agreement is in place or the sender is fraudulently trying to sneak messages through. Fraudsters use a number of bypass techniques such as faking the global titles of legitimate senders, or maybe spoofing to make the message appear to be an on-net subscriber.

Another fraud concern is the SMS equivalent of premium rate offers where the receiver of the message is asked to call back to a revenue share number.

Still another issue is a flooding attack of SMS messages, similar to a DDoS attack on a server or firewall. To manage that problem, user alerts are triggered whenever a high spike in traffic is experienced.

	And how do you monetize this SMS fraud and revenue assurance service of yours?

It’s usually done at the point where the A2P traffic is collected — at the entry point or SMS gateway. Here the traffic is monetized and we would get a revenue share from the gateway with the rest of the money flowing to the operator.

So the operator is more protected: they can ensure they get monetized because they only have one partner to deal with to do that. And on top of that they get a solution at no financial risk to them.

Operators also like the idea of getting the solution through our managed service option. This is attractive because the mobile operator gets our expertise and quicker results. In a recent installation, an operator in Bangladesh saw a 45% reduction in fraud in the first 32 hours, and they started boosting their A2P revenue within 72 hours of installation.

	Just like other forms of bypass, I’m sure the fraudsters are constantly innovating and trying to skirt around your controls.

Yes, one of the latest threats is coming from Global Title (GT) scanning. The fraudsters learned to mimic the GT of the operator in order to terminate on the network. It’s made to look like the operator’ own traffic.

A lot of international disputes are arising from this fraud. Why? Imagine Vodafone is seeing lots of Verizon traffic. When it sends the bill, Verizon comes back and says the amount of traffic was 50% less. What’s happening is that someone is impersonating Verizon’s global title to terminate on Vodafone.

This trend is going strong so we devised a new feature in our system to identify this type of fraud.

So the price of safety is constant vigilance — and for HAUD Systems, that means constantly developing new features that stop and hopefully anticipate the next A2P fraud scheme.

	Claire, thanks for this nice briefing on A2P. Good luck growing this important new service.

Claire Cassar

Claire Cassar graduated Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Laws from the University of Malta, following which she read for a Masters in Economics of Competition Law with the University of Malta. She worked at Vodafone Malta for 9 years during which time she headed the Legal, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs departments. She also worked for a short while in Vodafone Qatar during its start-up phase in 2009 as a Marketing Manager. Upon her return to Malta, she was appointed as Consumer Sales Manager in Vodafone Malta where she was responsible for the direct and indirect sales channels for Vodafone Malta’s consumer segment.

She joined Fortytwo Group in 2011 and was appointed as CEO of HAUD Systems Limited in April 2012. Since then she has been responsible for the HAUD start-up phase and the go-to-market strategy for the company as well as the commercial aspect of HAUD’s product offerings.

Between September 2011 and December 2013 Dr. Cassar was also the Group General Counsel for Fortytwo Group and its subsidiaries. Dr. Cassar is also currently Chair of the Women’s Forum sub-committee as part of the CHOGM 2015 preparations where Malta will host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit. Contact Claire via

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The Shrink-Wrapped Search Engine: Why It’s Becoming a Vital Tool in Telecom Analytics — interview with Tapan Bhatt — Google invented low cost, big data computing with its distributed search engine that lives in mammoth data centers populated with thousands of commodity CPUs and disks. Now search engine technology is available as “shrink wrapped” enterprise software. This article explains how this new technology is solving telecom analytics problems large and small.
Sharing Intelligence, Services, and Infrastructure across the Telecom Galaxy — interview with Gary Zimmerman — The telecom industry is an industry of sharing. In fact, the rise of mobile broadband is driving a greater reliance on real-time intelligence, services trading, and infrastructure exchange. In this article, a leading info exchange provider explains the value of its services portfolio and points to other interoperability and sharing ideas under development.
Data Monetization: Why Selling Intelligence is a Hot New Revenue Stream for Mobile Carriers — interview with Joe Levy — Data monetization is a revenue dream come true for mobile carriers: a highly profitable sideshow where the carrier analyzes and sells data it already collects for other purposes. In this article you’ll learn how operators monetize their data through use cases in corporate advertising and media branding.
Harvesting Big Data Riches in Retailer Partnering, Actionable CEM & Network Optimization — interview with Oded Ringer — In the analytics market there’s plenty of room for small solution firms to add value through a turnkey service or cloud/licensed solution. But what about large services firms: where do they play? In this article you’ll learn how a global services giant leverages data of different types to help telcos: monetize retail partnerships, optimize networks, and make CEM actionable.
Raising a Telco’s Value in the Digital Ecosystem: One Use Case at a Time — interview with Jonathon Gordon — The speed of telecom innovation is forcing software vendors to radically adapt and transform their business models. This article shows how a deep packet inspection company has expanded into revenue generation, particularly for mobile operators. It offers a broad palette of value-adding use cases from video caching and parental controls to application-charging and DDoS security protection.
Radio Access Network Data: Why It’s Become An Immensely Useful Analytics Source — interview with Neil Coleman — It’s hard to overstate the importance of Radio Access Network (RAN) analytics to a mobile operator’s business these days. This article explains why the RAN data, which lives in the air interface between the base station and the handset -- can be used for a business benefit in network optimization and customer experience.
Back Office Streamlining to Enterprise Support: The Many Flavors of Wireline Analytics — interview with Tom Nolting — Mobile analytics gets plenty of press coverage, but analytics is just as crucial for wireline operators. In this article, a billing VP at a leading wireline operator discusses several diverse uses of analytics in billing, enterprise sales/retention, and network partner margin assurance.
Analytics Biology: The Power of Evolving to New Data Sources and Intelligence Gathering Methods — interview with Paul Morrissey — Data warehouses create great value, yet it’s now time to let loose non-traditional big data platforms that create value in countless pockets of operational efficiency that have yet to be fully explored. This article explains why telecoms must expand their analytics horizons and bring on all sorts of new data sources and novel intelligence gathering techniques.
B/OSS Mathematics: The Quest to Analyze Business Problems & Drive Operating Decisions — interview with Matti Aksela — Analytics is the glory of mathematics brought to practical use. And in telecom, analytics has merely stratched the surface of its full potential. In this article, you’ll learn how machine learning is being combined with the power of CDR number crunching to optimize mobile top-ups, control churn — and in the future, help telecoms make critical network and operating decisions.
Leveraging the RA/FM Platform to Deliver Business Insights to Finance & Marketing — by Amit Daniel — Carrier professionals using RA and fraud management tools are getting requests from internal customers who want the role of RA/FM platforms expanded to deliver up-to-date analytics data for finance and marketing purposes. This article advocates a cross-product layer to serve such broader use cases. The effect would be to transform the existing RA/FM platform into a combined business protection and business growth analytics engine.
A Mobile Marketer Service: Bridging Personalization & B/OSS Flowthrough — interview with Efrat Nakibly — Marketing analytics is a prescriptive program for driving actions such as sending a timely promotion to a mobile subscriber. But completeness demands that you also be able to provision that treatment, qualify the promotion, and keep billing fully in the loop. This article shows how a managed services program can deliver such an end-to-end process and manage customer life cycles on a one-to-one basis.
Science of Analytics: Bringing Prepaid Top Ups & Revenue Maximization under the Microscope — interview with Derek Edwards — Prepaid subscribers are the customers that carriers know the least about. The operator is not interacting with prepaid customers on a monthly basis. You’re not sending a bill, nor do you have detailed profiles on these customers, especially in the developing world where customers are buying SIMs at a grocery store. This interview explains how contextual marketing meets the unique analytics challenge of prepaid customers.
Connecting B/OSS Silos and Linking Revenue Analytics with the Customer Experience — by Anssi Tauriainen — Customer experience analytics is a complex task that flexes B/OSS data to link the customer’s network experience and actions to improve it and drive greater revenue. In this article, you’ll gain an understanding of how anayltics data needs to be managed across various customer life cycle stages and why it’s tailored for six specific user groups at the operator.
Profitable 3G: China’s Mobile Operators Monetize Networks with Retailers & Partners — interview with Kevin Xu — Mobile operators are at the center of explosive growth in wireless services. But to exploit this opportunity requires IT ingenuity and a broader view on how the mobile user can be served. In this article you’ll learn the innovative techniques Chinese operators use to monetize 3G networks via analytics and partnerships with retailers, social networks, and advertisers.
Customer Analytics: Making the Strategic Leap From Hindsight to Foresight — interview with Frank Bernhard — Are your company’s analytics programs scattered? Is there a strategy in place for customer analytics? This interview with a leading telecom analytics consultant explains why strategy and planning around the analytics function is crucial to getting your money’s worth. Topics discussed include: hindsight vs. foresight; an advanced analytics program; and the interface sophistication required to support high end vs. low end analytics users.
Meeting the OTT Video Challenge: Real-Time, Fine-Grain Bandwidth Monitoring for Cable Operators — interview with Mark Trudeau — Cable operators in North America are being overwhelmed by the surge in video and audio traffic. In this article you’ll learn how Multi Service Operators (MSOs) are now monitoring their traffic to make critical decisions to protect QoS service and monetize bandwidth. Also featured is expert perspective on trends in: network policy; bandwidth caps; and customer care issues.
Analytics Meditations: The Power of Low-Cost Hardware and the Social Network Within — interview with Ken King — Analytics didn‘t arrive yesterday. Data warehousing and BI have been in the telecom vocabulary for twenty-five or more years. In this interview, you’ll gain a perspective on why “big data” changes the game and why social network (or social circles) analysis promises the next level of insights. Other interesting topics include: segmenting the analytics market, engaging with carrier clients, and upgrading from older- to newer-style methodologies.
LTE Analytics: Learning New Rules in Real-Time Network Intelligence, Roaming and Customer Assurance — interview with Martin Guilfoyle — LTE is telecom’s latest technology darling, and this article goes beyond the network jargon, to explain the momentous changes LTE brings. The interview delves into the marriage of IMS, high QoS service delivery via IPX, real-time intelligence and roaming services, plus the new customer assurance hooks that LTE enables.
Shared Data Plans: The Challenge of Managing a Family of Pricing, Revenue Assurance, Fraud, and Network Policy Issues — by Amit Daniel — Verizon Wireless‘ recent announcement of its move to shared data plans for families shook the mobile industry. In this column, cVidya’s Amit Daniel shines a spotlight on the knowhow and analytics tools that operators now deperately need to offer the right shared data price plans, ensure bandwidth throttling is handled correctly, and address new fraud concerns.
Analytics Guru: Are Telecoms Ready for the Biz Intelligence Explosion? — interview with John Meyers — Business intelligence is evolving from the creation of dashboards and reports to taking action based on a deep knowledge of the environmental context. The article explores the implications of “big data” in terms of IPTV, storage requirements, hardware, event collection, and deep packet inspection.
Social Networking for Telecoms: How To Enlist Friends and Family as Mobile Marketers — interview with Simon Rees — Social Network Analysis (SNA) is about exploiting data on “friends and family” connections to combat churn and win new CSP business. The article explores how an analysis of the ebb and flow of CDRs, phone calls, and messages, can identify key influencers and drive powerful marketing campaigns.
Making the Strategic Leap From Billing to Merchandising — interview with Humera Malik — Today billing/charging technology has progressed to the point where the usage intelligence, the charges, the user behaviors, and the analytics can all come together in near real-time. This article discusses the organizational and marketing strategies that enable a operator to create a true “merchandising” system that can revolutionize a CSP’s business.

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