Reality Check: Viva text messaging

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column where C-level ex-ecutives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
Surely the award for the technology with the longest half-life must go to the text message? Predictions of its death regularly make headlines, and yet text messaging manages to keep reinventing itself and proving its worth, even faced with the massive uptake of smartphones around the world and the related rise of over-the-top messaging services.
Earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress event, application-to-person and machine-to-machine were called out as areas where text messaging still continues to add value.
This view is supported by Ovum’s Neha Dharia, who said: “the period from 2013 until 2017 will mark a golden age for A2P [text messaging], with [text messaging] coming into its own as a bearer technology for a range of mobile services.” According to Ovum, 1.4 trillion A2P text messages were expected to be transacted globally in 2013, growing to 2.19 trillion in 2018.
With the rising popularity of OTT apps such as Whatsapp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger, it’s not all doom and gloom for text messaging. The rise in popularity of OTT apps has not always meant the downfall of text messaging in some markets. Also, in markets with more postpaid contract subscribers than prepaid customers, text messaging traffic will take longer to decline thanks to bundled messaging packages.
So just what is giving text messaging this next lease on life? A couple of different applications of A2P and M2M messaging are worth highlighting.
Marketing: An old one, but a good one. Even in the developed world, mobile marketing leader, Starbucks, is still harnessing the power of text messages to drive its mobile marketing activities. Recently, the coffee chain launched a summer promotion to drive sales of its “frappuccino” that, via calls-to-action on Twitter, Facebook and its mobile app, encouraged customers to opt-in to the “Frappuccino Fun All Summer Long” program via a text message short code. In return, customers receive content such as GIF images via text and multi-media messaging.
Emergency services: In May, the Rwandan government announced plans for a text message-powered early warning system to notify the public about natural disasters and, if necessary, evacuate areas ahead of danger. It is also intended to notify emergency teams to ensure they get to affected areas in time to save lives. Rwanda suffers from heavy rains, landslides and flooding, leading to deaths and damage to property and land.
Government and administration: In India regional passport offices can dispatch up to 72,000 applications a year. Verification was handled manually, resulting in huge delays. This year, the system is being automated, with text messaging used to alert people when their application hits certain milestones along the way.
Fallbacks and workarounds: Earlier this year, when Twitter was said to be banned in Turkey, the social network offered its Turkish customers a workaround via text message. Like-wise, OTT messaging providers are using text messages to bridge the gap between customers who have smartphones, and their friends and family who still use regular cell-phones.
Two-factor authentication: Using text messages for 2FA has a number of ad-vantages. It has reach; everyone has text messaging on their phones and knows how to use it; it can be used to educate customers about 2FA; it’s a useful backup; and it doesn’t need data access to work. In fact, while Twitter was working on its sophisticated in-app authentication service, it went ahead and launched 2FA using text messaging.
Surveys: Especially in the developing world, text messaging is being used to conduct surveys and is achieving higher responses in a shorter time and at a fraction of the cost of traditional survey methods. This ensures that organizations such as the World Bank are receiving a more meaningful cross-section of opinions and feedback than before.
Machine-to-machine messaging: Device Cloud Networks and Anemon announced a collaboration to provide the farming world with an M2M service that auto-mates monitoring of the lactation cycle of cows. Inaccurate monitoring has resulted in 50% of insemination times being missed, but now, farmers can receive a text alert from SIM cards included in the monitoring system. The service claims a 90% detection rate.
So while no one is disagreeing that “free” OTT messaging services have grabbed a lot of (but certainly not all) person-to-person messaging traffic, the A2P and M2M messaging space is still alight with opportunity, both in developed and developing mobile markets. And this is where messaging volumes, and revenue, is going to continue to flow.

Simon Landsheer has been with Silverstreet since 2006 and in this time has been the driving force behind the company’s immense growth and expansion into new markets, from its initial foundation in the Netherlands, throughout Europe and subsequently into Asia. Silverstreet has continued to grow since his inception as CEO in April 2011, and he has re-positioned the company beyond its focus as one of the leading text messaging aggregators in the global mobile industry and more so towards that of an international telecom group.