The new year is already here, and with January already over, it is time to get up to speed with the most recent business messaging news from around the globe.
Over 80% of CPaaS spend in 2022 was one-way only
A new report by Mobilesquared has revealed that Mobilesquared’s 80.1% of the total CPaaS spend in 2022 by global brands was on one-way communications via SMS, MMS, email, in-app push notifications, and video, that did not drive customer interaction. Only 19.9% of the budgets spent was on two-way communication channels, creating an engagement opportunity with the consumer. Mobilesquared predicts that the share of two-way comms will reach 31.2% of total spending by 2026.
Nick Lane, chief insight analyst at Mobilesquared and author of the report, believes that “CPaaS is not the engagement platform everyone believes it to be… yet”, as in 2022 only $1 in every $5 spent on CPaaS had the potential to create an engagement activity with the consumer, with other $4 spent on non-interactive, one-way channels. According to his forecast, the amount spent on two-way engagement will grow to $1.5 in every $5 invested by 2026. However, he still points out that this reveals brands’ propensity towards playing it safe and spending the mainstay of their CPaaS budget on reliable and robust one-way comms, delivered via channels like email, SMS and in-app notifications.
Total OTT business messaging traffic will reach 254 billion by 2027
A new study by Juniper Research declares that global OTT business messaging traffic will reach 254 billion by 2027, a projected growth of 172% compared to the expected 93 billion messages in 2023. The increased availability of open OTT messaging APIs and competitive pricing models are quoted as primary driving factors behind this surge, creating a rich media alternative to established operator-led channels, such as SMS.
The authors quote consistently low OTT business messaging pricing as the main driver of CPaaS platform adoption since messaging app pricing is set by the platform rather than operators, providing far more predictable pricing than SMS. Another contributing factor, according to Juniper, will be the advanced security and rich media capabilities. Specifically, security features such as brand authentication will boost user trust as brands increasingly communicate with consumers through verified channels.
Operator data breach affects 37 million customers
T-Mobile has reported yet another data breach, admitting the hackers were able to steal the information of approximately 37 million subscribers. It is said that the issue was discovered on January 5th, but the carrier suspects that the hackers had been leaking data since November 25th.
While the issue was contained within 24 hours after being discovered, the criminals have had access to the data long enough to acquire people’s account numbers, names, birthdays, emails, phone numbers and billing addresses, along with plan subscriber plan details. However, T-Mobile stated that “no passwords, payment card information, social security numbers, government ID numbers or other financial account information” were stolen, according to the press release.
The operator is still investigating the incident to get a more detailed view of what happened. Back in 2022, T-Mobile agreed to pay $350 million to settle a consolidated class action lawsuit due to previous breaches and promised to spend $150 million to update its data security capabilities.
Globe Telecom blacklists over 50,000 SIMs linked to fraud, blocks 2.72 bn spam and scam SMS in 2022
Philippines-based carrier Globe Telecom reported deactivating and blacklisting more than 50,000 SIMs last year as a part of its efforts to intensify consumer protection amid the rising cases of online fraud.
Specifically, Globe deactivated 20,225 and blacklisted 35,333 SIMs involved in scam and spam activities in 2022 alone. Additionally, Globe managed to block the record 2.72 billion scam and spam messages, 83.4 million being bank-related. All these efforts are claimed to be part of Globe’s ongoing effort to protect customers from harmful content and fraud before the enactment of the SIM Registration Act.
Under its filtering protocol, Globe deactivates fraud-associated SIMs within its network while blacklisting SIMs issued by other carriers to prevent them from sending messages to Globe. Within two weeks after enforcing this policy, Globe blocked over 32.2 million scam and spam messages with clickable links between September 28 and October 13, 2022.