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Submitted by Industry Comment on Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:44 |
International text messaging is about to enter a whole new phase of reliability under a GSMA sponsored hubbing scheme. Michael Kowalzik, CEO, of TynTec, one of the participating organisations, outlines the reasons and benefits of the project.
SMS Not So Interoperable
Doesn’t it seem counter-intuitive that in today’s increasingly wired, always-on communications world it’s still a hit or miss affair if a text message gets delivered to an international recipient? Because of the way international SMS is processed there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to send a text to a contact overseas – you can always talk to someone whatever network they’re on so why can’t we communicate via SMS?
This problem in SMS interoperability is caused by the current way the GSM-based communication is processed - through bi-lateral connectivity agreements between mobile operators. The good news coming up is that there is a framework solution in sight. The GSM Association (GSMA) has developed the SMS Hubbing Initiative to enable full interoperability of SMS across mobile operators worldwide, giving operators the opportunity to increase SMS reach, and therefore revenues, based on international text messaging.
So Many Ops - Too Few Connections
Unlike voice - where any mobile user can call any other mobile wherever they are in the world - SMS users are still limited in their reach by the established roaming agreements their operator has in place. SMS doesn’t follow the same routes as voice so, unless an operator has a bilateral roaming agreement in place with another operator, there is no SMS delivery capability between the users of these networks.
Sounds unlikely? The reality is that today’s mobile operators, no matter how big they are, generally have between 150 and 350 roaming agreements in place out of a total of around 700 GSM only operators worldwide. This means that it just isn’t always the case that operator A can get that SMS to operator B.
While SMS reach is limited to bilateral roaming agreements between individual operators, it’s unlikely that full SMS interoperability will be achieved on a worldwide scale by setting up more roaming agreements. After all, these agreements are time consuming and costly to put in place and the revenue benefits of an extra roaming agreement might not justify the investment required to set it up in the first place.
SMS Hubbing On the Horizon
SMS Hubbing is the new favoured option to optimise international SMS traffic by avoiding these costly bilateral roaming agreements. The GSM Association (GSMA) has recently developed its SMS Hubbing Initiative, part of the Open Connectivity project, to create a full-scale pan-continental open SMS hubbing trial involving all major hub providers. The overall objective: making ‘open SMS hubbing’ a commercial reality before the end of 2006. So far no less than 9 SMS hub providers and 29 operators have committed to meeting the Open Connectivity High Level Requirements and these took part in the trial.
The idea is to set up central hubs where SMS can be routed to non-connected networks that are not covered by the operators’ roaming agreements. Thus the hubs would themselves offer SMS connectivity into a wide range of mobile networks internationally, allowing operators to send to other operators that they don’t have a bilateral agreement with, whilst avoiding the need for costly individual connections. The hubbing model also simplifies the commercial and technical side of international SMS routing, by providing mobile operators with a single relationship for billing, administrative and operational activities.
Text Gains Connections Like Voice
SMS hubbing is a mirror of the voice connectivity model – rather than relying on costly and complex bilateral arrangements, voice traffic generally flows through telehouses, which are essentially hubs for the voice world.
The GSMA developed some standards to evaluate the performance of the hub providers who took part at the trial covering areas such as:
- Commitment on the Quality of Service level for end-to-end transmission.
- Ability to provide a mechanism to measure the level of quality met.
- Full transparency while routing the messages (which network the SMS is terminating on and which third parties are being used).
- Anti-spam and anti-virus capabilities, among others.
There are currently thirteen different organisations, including TynTec, developing SMS hub capabilities under the GSMA initiative (the others are Aicent, Belgacom ICS, Clickatell, CITIC Telecom 1616, Comfone, Radius-ED, MACH/End2End, Mobile 365, Syniverse Technologies, Telecom Italia Sparkle, TeliaSonera, and VeriSign.) Meanwhile moves are well advanced to develop appropriate standards for SMS hubbing to ensure seamless international compatibility and facilitate the SMS inter-working process for operators, who should now be talking to SMS hub providers to take advantage of this new SMS inter-working structure.
Another Serious Step For SMS
SMS hubbing is coming and it will be one of the major factors for the growing international use and acceptance of texting. With seamless international connectivity, SMS will be equal to voice when it comes to reach – benefiting consumers and businesses as well as ensuring additional revenue streams for operators, particularly important in these times of stagnating voice revenues.
Article by Michael Kowalzik, CEO, TynTec
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