Indosat Ooredoo: Monetizing A2P SMS traffic with Infobip Anam Protect SMS Firewall

Challenge

Indosat Ooredoo was looking for a way to supplement the general decline in roaming revenue, and A2P SMS was identified as a viable service to achieve that. For several years, Indosat Ooredoo saw an exponential revenue growth from A2P SMS services, making it an A2P SMS knowledge hub within the Ooredoo group, sharing experiences with other opcos about how to reverse negative revenue trends.

However, Indosat Ooredoo ultimately experienced A2P SMS revenue stagnation. In a way, Indosat Ooredoo’s A2P SMS was a victim of its own success, as different teams and verticals within the MNO started to show their interest in A2P SMS, leading to different pricing in different departments. This unbalanced A2P pricing between wholesale and enterprise customers was a part of the wider picture where Indosat Ooredoo realized that A2P international traffic is also affecting domestic traffic.

In cases where wholesale pricing was increased, traffic would just switch to another vertical within Indosat Ooredoo itself, e.g. enterprise or consumer, and Indosat Ooredoo became acutely aware of the need for a tool that would help them coordinate market approach and pricing details.

The decision was made to partner with a single A2P SMS provider that was to manage all A2P SMS traffic and ensure harmonized pricing across different Indosat Ooredoo departments. The partner needed to eliminate grey routes and provide consistent A2P SMS revenue growth, positively impacting revenue assurance for Indosat Ooredoo.

An international tender was held and Infobip was selected.

Solution

The A2P SMS partner needed to commit to realistic A2P SMS revenue projections and immediately reverse revenue stagnation, but also be technically capable to manage SS7, SMPP and SIM box traffic detection, and also flexible enough to adapt to complex telecommunications infrastructure.

One of the key requirements was also advanced detection and filtering solutions from an experienced global player that would be able to provide expert consultancy and be a trusted partner in building the A2P SMS business for Indosat Ooredoo.

Infobip ticked all the boxes with the Anam Protect SMS firewall and monetization consultancy. The Machine Learning features of Anam Protect provide efficient and precise traffic filtering with the number of false positives declining with each iteration of the system continuously upgraded. Our SMS Firewall also possesses a dedicated SIM box detection module which has proven its efficiency with Indosat Ooredoo as well as other partners worldwide.

Combining the powerful technical features of Anam Protect with global expertise in A2P SMS messaging as a provider for the world’s largest enterprises allowed Infobip to reverse the negative trends. Infobip’s flexibility and agile approach to business enabled the system to be live and operational in less than two months from the start of the negotiations. Infobip’s expert engineers were able to quickly and accurately implement the filtering system on top of Indosat Ooredoo’s complex IT infrastructure.

Indosat Ooredoo’s complex A2P SMS operations prior to Infobip’s involvement, spread across different departments, meant that there were effectively multiple uncoordinated messaging platforms. Getting proper visibility and insight into all incoming A2P SMS traffic was a big task, along with domestic traffic segmentation, and this is where Infobip’s global expertise coupled with local presence and knowledge of the Indonesian messaging ecosystem was crucial. Engaging with enterprises was a part of this process and it enabled Indosat Ooredoo to set and enforce sender registration rules for clean, legitimate and properly charged traffic.

Result

All the key requirements of Indosat Ooredoo were met, especially in terms of revenue. International traffic revenue was increased more than three times, protecting the price per SMS. Meanwhile, domestic A2P SMS traffic has seen an increase of up to 10%. This means that Infobip’s filtering setup was able to help with revenue assurance, and Indosat Ooredoo has been able to protect its SMS prices and match market pricing.

From an internal standpoint, Indosat Ooredoo was able to harmonize activities between its wholesale, enterprise and customer verticals. Another important aspect was the fact that Indosat Ooredoo was able to identify and filter out legitimate A2P SMS partners and their legitimate traffic, from those using grey routes and routing unsolicited traffic.

Grey route and SIM box traffic were significant pain points for Indosat Ooredoo, and Infobip has been able to efficiently and in a very short period of time eliminate the threats those posed to revenue derived from A2P SMS traffic.