latest data trends on a2p and p2a messaging

SMS engagement rates are over 94%, dwarfing those of most other communication channels. The personal, direct nature of SMS makes text messages nearly impossible to ignore. Think about it: when was the last time you ignored an SMS? You may have 1,136 unread emails and 47 unread Facebook Messenger IMs, but you likely have 0 unread messages in your SMS inbox. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that an SMS is typically read within 90 seconds of its delivery.

Given that kind of engagement, it follows that SMS is a key channel through which companies send their business-to-consumer (B2C) communication. However, just getting SMS messages delivered can be much harder than one would assume. The complex geo-political history of the modern telecommunications infrastructure has ensured a regulatory landscape that is extremely complicated — both at a country level, as well as at the independent carrier level.

And to think, SMS squats on a control channel that was never intended for person-to-person communication. In fact, that channel is still used for its original purpose: enabling network towers and mobile devices to share status updates. Text messages have to find bandwidth among that machine-to-machine chatter. You could say that each text message delivered is a little victory of human resourcefulness, especially when dealing with the vagaries of different national regulations and network preferences.

To illustrate just how complex the journey of a simple SMS text message is, this article will take you through the gauntlet of challenges global SMS messages have to survive before reaching their destinations. But before we dive into the complicated stuff, let’s start with something simple.

Person-to-person (P2P) messaging

Imagine you’re using a GSM cell phone and you send a text message to your friend. You’re both on the same network and in the same country. In this case, the journey your message takes is pretty straightforward:

1. Your cell phone turns your message into an SMS packet.

2. It then connects to the local tower and sends the SMS packet to the network’s Short Message Service Center (SMSC).

3. The SMSC stores a copy of the message.

4. The SMSC then finds your friend’s number in the network’s list of subscribers, which also tells it which tower your friend’s phone is connected to.

5. The SMSC then hands the message to the mobile equivalent of a central telephone exchange (called the Mobile Switching Center), which handles delivery to your friend’s device.

Assuming your friend’s phone is turned on and has service, the message shows up on their phone. If their phone is turned off, then the SMSC would use its copy of the message to keep retrying.

In the early days of SMS, this was how every message was sent and delivered: without SMS interconnects between mobile networks, messages could be sent to subscribers only on the same network.

The story would be a little different if you were on separate networks or if the phones were CDMA rather than GSM, but the important points here are that:

● SMS uses the network’s control channel; P2P messaging is an afterthought that must vie for bandwidth with the network’s housekeeping messages.

● SMS messages are stored and then forwarded; a copy of your message is kept each time it is handed off from one SMSC to another.

If you’re sending messages to a friend, the impact is little more than the 160-character limit – thanks to the size of the control channel’s data packets – or network oversubscribed messages around midnight on New Year’s Eve. If you want to use SMS commercially, things get a little more complex.

Business SMS messaging

Sending an SMS to your friend is a little like taking a bus to your favorite local mall. Sometimes there’s traffic or the driver is late, but the trip mostly goes as expected. After all, you’re taking one mode of transportation and you’re staying within the same city.

Business messaging is more like global air freight: not only do you need a chunk of infrastructure but you also need to be an expert in local regulations, customs, and individual carrier differences.

Now, let’s make our example a little more interesting.

You run a service from your office in San Francisco and you have customers worldwide. You send daily account balance alerts to your customers via SMS, and some have also opted into receiving special offer alerts by SMS.

Source