Mobile World Congress – the mobile industry’s flagship event – took place in Barcelona from February 26 – 29 this year. Hosted by GSMA, the event was an opportunity for industry leaders and experts from across the globe to come together to discuss upcoming changes and the latest industry trends and developments.
With more than two decades of experience in leading the messaging industry, Openmind Networks remains as committed as ever to remaining at the forefront of messaging innovation. We were delighted to have several members of our senior leadership team on the ground throughout the week at MWC Barcelona, meeting customers, partners and industry leaders. Here are some of our key takeaways from the event.
What We Learned from MWC 2024 Barcelona
Members of the Openmind Networks team at MWC Barcelona 2024
The Evolution of RCS Messaging
Apple’s decision to support RCS messaging on their platform is a game-changer for the messaging industry. While the world waits to see the final impact of this on the messaging ecosystem, it is evident that telecom operators are already making plans for a transition to omnichannel messaging solutions.
Google has made significant advancements with its Jibe platform in providing the infrastructure for the industry as a whole – Operators, Aggregators and the developer community – on which to build rich business messaging. Their decision to give termination fees to Operators on business messages delivered over Jibe is a considerable offering to get Operators to come on board with the RCS evolution of business messaging.
While SMS maintains its position as the king of business messaging, it may change radically in the coming years. Telecom operators are looking to RCS and omnichannel messaging solutions to enable them to secure their place in the lucrative business messaging marketplace, as well as empower their enterprise customers to continue to meet the increasing demands of their consumers.
Revenue Assurance, AIT and Messaging Fraud Protection
Messaging fraud and the battle to keep networks safe and secure was another topic of discussion from the event. A key takeaway from MWC Barcelona is that, even more so than protection against traditional fraud actions such as smishing, was the desire from telcos to protect their networks from revenue leakage. Revenue leakage is typically characterised as lost revenue to grey routes and SIM Boxes operating on networks to find cheaper routes to termination. AIT too is contributing to revenue loss as brands are beginning to have enough of the excessive termination fees in a select group of countries.
The volume of artificially inflated traffic is continuing to fall rapidly in the past few weeks and months with large tech firms such as Google, Meta and X looking to exert greater control over their A2P messaging spend. This is directly affecting the revenue streams of aggregators in particular, and emphasizing the need for telecom operators to gain greater control of their network and ensure that they are protected against fraudulent actors exploiting grey routes, legacy pipes, SIM farms and other nefarious methods that can result in revenue loss.
The 5G Monetization Challenge
Telecom operators have invested huge sums in both capital expenditure and operating expenses to roll out 5G networks to their customers, yet the return on this investment has been lower than anticipated to this point. To successfully monetize 5G and improve the ROI on these capital investments, MNOs and carriers need to innovate new use cases and strategies. This might include things like attracting IoT partners and monetizing those use cases.
Artificial Intelligence
With more than 40 sessions at this year’s event focusing on the impact of AI, MWC Barcelona emphasized the transformative impact that generative AI will have on the telecommunications industry.
Coming away from MWC, it is evident that AI integration, consumer experience enhancements and AI-centric innovation will continue to drive the future of messaging, shaping how enterprises interact with customers, changing customer expectations of their brand experience and interactions (e.g. through wearable technology), as well as how telecom operators protect their network from bad actors. Operators will increasingly turn to AI-powered solutions in order to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to fraud protection and revenue assurance.
To learn more about the topics covered in this article, or to discuss how Openmind Networks can help you navigate the future of business messaging, please get in touch at [email protected] or contact our team of experts online here.
