In our previous blog post “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine”, we looked at how operators can deploy HAUD’s Traffic Profiling Service to gain a realistic picture of all activity occurring on their network.

But what type of network activity are we looking at? How does a solution, like HAUD, categorise SMS traffic and how can this information potentially maximise the network’s performance and revenues?

Through its analysis, the HAUD solution categorises SMS traces into Person-to-Person (P2P) traffic and Application-to-Person (A2P) traffic, with a further categorisation of A2P into legitimate, recoverable and unwanted traffic.

Person-to-Person (P2P) traffic refers to SMS traffic from one person’s mobile phone to another’s. This traffic is rarely of a malicious nature and is billed and paid for according to pre-defined retail and inter-connect rates.

Application-to-Person (A2P) traffic refers to machine generated SMSs and it is commonly used legitimately by financial institutions, airlines, social media platforms and online shopping portals to confirm people’s identities and send service updates, amongst other reasons. Although this traffic is indeed legitimate, the HAUD solution identifies the percentage of this traffic that is terminating on an operator’s network over grey routes.  Although the originator of the traffic would have paid to send such traffic, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the recipient’s operator is paid for terminating this traffic to its subscribers.

HAUD offers sound advice on how Fraud and Revenue Management Teams can transform this scenario into an opportunity to recover and generate new revenue streams.

On a more positive note, legitimate A2P traffic is when an operator is aware of the traffic and it is being billed for accordingly.

Unwanted A2P traffic refers to fraud and spam. Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have a keen interest in prohibiting malicious traffic from terminating on their network as it can increase subscriber disgruntlement leading to churn, potential loss in revenues as well as bad publicity and increased complaints to its customer touch points.

HAUD Systems offers a suite of solutions that are specifically tailored to identify and categorise all traffic terminating on and originating from an MNO’s network. This gives operators a unique insight into how additional revenue streams can be generated from recoverable A2P traffic as well as the beneficial knock-on effects of maintaining a fraud and spam-free network by blocking unwanted traffic. All these findings are presented in a detailed report and tactical plan to assist operators in combatting SMS fraud and spam whilst maximising revenues.

For more information about what HAUD can bring to the table, please send an email to [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help you.