We have been in the world of mobile engagement over a decade. As our name hints at, we are at the heart of the Voice business.
Helping our global partners both monetize their Voice traffic worldwide and eliminate fraud attempts on them has been our daily bread and butter for many years. A couple of years ago however, we extended these specialized services into the rapidly expanding domain of Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS. Monetization and anti-fraud is what we live and breath. It is our very essence.
This video is the first in a series of interviews with our CEO, Ehsan Ahmadi, introducing Vox Carrier and looking at the journey mobile operators need to embark on to secure their networks and monetize their transactions. Always great cooperating with James Williams from MrConnectivity as well and getting his perspective on things into the mix!
Now more than ever, brands are understanding the power of conversations with their customers.
The world of A2P (Application-to-Person) was for a long time viewed as being one-way only but this has changed dramatically over recent years. Communications coming from brands have to feel natural to consumers and a way of doing this is to utilize channels they are already so familiar with, channels that are both ubiquitous and drive high levels of engagement. No individual channel does this more than SMS.
A2P SMS volumes are on the rise and it is high time that mobile operators globally took their rightful share of the market.
This second in a series of interviews with our CEO, Ehsan Ahmadi, we look further into the journey mobile operators need to embark on to clean this valuable SMS channel and monetize their transactions. As you’ll hear, power truly is nothing without control. Another great cooperation with James Williams from MrConnectivity who is not scared to voice his opinions either!
Those of you closer to my age will almost certainly remember the famous 1993 American fantasy comedy Groundhog Day. Written and directed by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell and Chris Elliot, the film portrays people trapped in a time loop. Murray’s character, weatherman Phil Connors, gradually becomes depressed and desperate for a way to escape a time loop where the same day repeats itself. Sound familiar?
The past few months have not exactly been a breeze for countless hundreds of millions of us but there are glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel. Thankfully. But so many of us and so many organisations around the world have been missing the physical face-to-face element of communication which is critical to both building and maintaining personal and professional relationships. The mobile channel – already important for this – has been called upon even more for engaging with customers, potential customers and please don’t forget, team members.
Digital transformation has been a hot topic in recent years. Companies had mapped out their long-term digital transformation plans but a couple of months into 2020, these suddenly became unworkable and effectively had to be torn up. The luxury of time suddenly was something they suddenly just did not have, finding themselves having to adjust at breakneck speed for something that has proven to be many countries’ biggest peace time challenge.
When Mike Tyson was asked in November 1996 by a reporter whether he was worried about Evander Holyfield and his fight plan he answered; “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” And wow, have we all been hit. Hard and unexpectedly.
SMS is in its 28th year and it continues to prove its naysayers wrong. I totally agree that it can come across as a bit flat, monochrome, lacking visual impact but it isn’t what I view as being the central pillar of mobile engagement without good reason. It is ubiquitous. It’s easy to use and usage cuts across all demographics like a knife through hot butter. You don’t need WiFi or mobile broadband. The result? 98% of messages successfully delivered are read, the majority within the number of minutes less than we have fingers on one hand. SMS just works.
In order to build genuine, meaningful relationships with customers, it takes more than just one channel. We all should know that and accept it. SMS is great but it alone isn’t the silver bullet all organisations are looking for to fulfil their mobile engagement needs.
Everybody is in need of something which brings all the different mobile channels, strands, together in a seamless manner, creating easy two-way dialogues. This is what the world of omnichannel content strategy is about. But it isn’t easy. The word ‘omnichannel’ is thrown around like confetti across our industry when the hard truth is that few organisations have truly mastered bringing everything together required: email, voice (whether traditional or not), video, chat apps, A2P SMS, Push, chatbots and of course ‘new’ channels such as RCS. The reality is that RCS has been around for a decade.
Rich Communication Services has (or is it have?) had a number of false dawns but come 2020, was starting to pick up and get into its stride. From my (virtual) travels around the industry the past months though, I have really seen that RCS has been well and truly sidelined to a huge degree. Channels that are easy to implement and ubiquitous, caring not for the operating system one’s smartphone may employ, have been grabbed with both hands and WhatsApp and SMS have been the big winners in the A2P mobile engagement stakes. The likes of RCS will be back.
The situation today is simple: A2P SMS more than gets to live another day. It is positively booming and going nowhere. Well, not for the next few years at least. The challengers keep on coming. And so do the challenges as we have all seen, as well…
Written by Ehsan Ahmadi – CEO of Vox Carrier
The service enables operators to effectively terminate traffic according to different countries’ OBR regulations, with direct routing and best optimised cost of termination.
Hong Kong SAR, 4 June 2020 – Vox Carrier announces expansion of its advanced Origin Based Rating (OBR) capabilities with more destinations and networks in Europe, providing operators with more direct routes and cost saving opportunities. The service provides high-quality direct termination at extremely competitive prices to partners around the world, while simplifying the OBR process in a number of different countries.
The solution ensures that operators’ traffic is terminated correctly to avoid OBR penalty surcharges and helps to combat fraudulent activities around OBR. The OBR service is part of Vox Platinum, offering a high-quality voice service with performance guarantees, broad coverage and around-the-clock support.
Vox Carrier is currently offering OBR solutions for voice termination in the following 15 countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
“As OBR is introduced across a growing number of countries, it is creating new challenges for operators. They are seeing large surcharges that directly impact their margins and we’ve made a commitment to help our customers avoid unnecessary penalties,” said Ehsan Ahmadi, CEO at Vox Carrier. “Our OBR solution provides guaranteed CLI and direct connectivity, enabling operators to seamlessly integrate OBR into their operations and optimise their cost of termination. We’re removing the complexity from OBR so that operators can effectively monetise their traffic.”
OBR provides mobile network operators (MNOs) with the ability to charge differently for international minutes terminating on their network, depending on the origin of the traffic. This has created complexity for operators across the globe, increased their cost of termination, and resulted in degradation of quality and customer experience due to arbitrage and fraudulent activities around the service. Areas such as CLI manipulation, CLI refiling, and SIMbox termination enable some players in the market to circumvent paying the additional surcharges imposed by MNOs. At the same time, operators are seeing a huge cost increase for their voice termination as they are faced with “defensive” pricing charges that are imposed to them by carriers who may not have the capabilities of routing and managing OBR as effectively as Vox Carrier does.
“Taking the complexity out of this equation and providing our customers with direct quality routes at the most optimal cost structure is our mission. This is part of the monetisation journey that we take our customers on and that directly impacts their profitability,” said Nicholas Nikrouyan, CCO & Chief of Staff at Vox Carrier. “We are currently covering more than 20 mobile networks and continue to expand this activity as OBR is rolled out across new markets. It is an opportunity to add new value for our customers and use our technology to solve a growing challenge for operators.”
Since 2018 Vox Carrier has been acquiring licenses in various countries, enabling local interconnection through a regulated environment. This provides access to the mobile termination rate pricing with direct MNO access, quality of service and stringent regulatory imposed SLAs with local in-country operators. On top of this, its VOX360 platform can detect and block all CLI or A-Number manipulations and other related fraudulent activities in real time, helping MNOs to protect their network.
Vox Carrier Launches Monetisation Audit to Help Minimise Disruption for the Voice and Messaging Industry
The audit will provide intelligence and recommendations for optimising and monetising operations, as the industry faces declining roaming revenues.
Hong Kong SAR, 7 March 2020 – Vox Carrier has introduced a monetisation audit for mobile network operators (MNOs) and digital service providers (DSPs) to enable them to minimise the impact of declining roaming revenues and changing user behaviours. The audit examines routing optimisation, operational efficiencies and revenue leakage from fraud in voice and SMS. The audit has been developed to offer MNOs and DSPs a sustainable and effective path forward as they manage the immediate impact they are seeing on roaming revenues, while protecting their network, increasing long-term profitability, and enhancing customer experience.
Juniper Research estimated that over 650 million passenger trips will be cancelled over the next nine months due to COVID-19, with travel bans costing the mobile industry $25 billion between March 2020 and the end of the year. The research forecasts that operators could lose up to $12 billion in roaming revenue alone between June and August.
“Our monetisation audit will provide insights to help MNOs and DSPs during these unprecedented times. While roaming revenues cannot be recovered, there is an opportunity to increase profitability in A2P SMS or international voice through fighting fraud,” said Ehsan Ahmadi, CEO at Vox Carrier. “This is a challenging time for our industry and we’re trying to offer solutions that will minimise disruption and enable operators and service providers to continue to offer critical communications solutions to their customers.”
Vox Carrier helps its partners address the challenges they have around voice and messaging monetisation through efficiently expanding reach, optimising operations, enhancing user experience and mitigating fraud. It serves MNOs, DSPs, carriers, and enterprises worldwide, delivering a range of solutions including A2P messaging, service monetisation and operational outsourcing.
“This pandemic has emphasised the critical role of telecommunication service providers to businesses, communities and users of all kinds. At Vox Carrier we want to play our part and provide mobile operators, DSPs and enterprises the tools they need to respond to this challenge. We are evolving and adapting our solutions through listening and understanding our customers. We have the expertise, agility, and the technology to help solve these challenges with our managed service solutions,” said Nicholas Nikrouyan, CCO & Chief of Staff at Vox Carrier.
Vox Carrier’s technologies initiative, Vox Technologies, launched its anti-fraud solution Vox360 in 2019, which won ‘The Best Anti-Fraud Innovation’ at the 2019 Messaging and SMS Global Awards. Please contact us at Vox360@voxcarrier.com to learn more about Vox Carrier’s monetisation audit and anti-fraud solutions.
VOX Carrier was delighted to attend ACC 2019 event starting the 3rd until the 6th of September in Cebu, Philippines. The chosen delegate – Shaiful Bahari – was given the opportunity to have fruitful meetings with current and potential partners.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to meet with us, VOX CARRIER looks forward to develop the business opportunities discussed at the event.