Global Partnerships: The Key to GatewayAPI's Success
Global messaging is a complex maze – and that’s also one of the things we love about it! At GatewayAPI, our mission is to simplify this world for our customers, and the key to our success lies in our ability to combine global connections with local expertise. A big part of this strategy is unfolded at events like WWC – Wholesale World Congress, which we attend every year.
In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of strategic partnerships and give you insights into the most important topics in the industry right now.
What is WWC?
WWC is a global conference held in Madrid for players in the telecommunications industry. It’s where the industry comes together to exchange ideas, discuss trends and make agreements that shape the future of global messaging. For GatewayAPI, WWC is an indispensable opportunity to find the right partners with in-depth knowledge of local markets.
It is important to note that there is no single gateway that has direct access to all the world’s mobile networks. That’s why we focus on finding and working with the best local and regional experts. This approach ensures both a stable delivery and a unique insight into the markets we operate in. It is this know-how that makes us more than just a supplier, where we can also step in and become a strategic partner for our customers.
In many cases, it’s about more than technology. It’s about understanding how regulations, culture and infrastructure affect communication in each country and region. In countries around the world, new requirements are constantly being added to help combat fraud. These requirements often include pre-authorizations and registrations, as well as requirements for the use of virtual numbers as we know it from the US. Our experience allows us to guide customers through these requirements, avoiding pitfalls and ensuring customers are ready to send messages as quickly as possible.
Highlights from WWC 2024
There were many topics discussed at this year’s WWC, and among them there were three recurring topics in particular, which were RCS, AIT and security.
RCS: Opportunities and challenges
RCS (Rich Communication Services) has been touted as the communication tool of the future. With features such as rich media, interactive buttons and the ability to create longer messages, the potential is huge. But in reality, it’s more complex than that. Adoption is still limited, mainly due to a lack of support from major players, and many operators are hesitant to fully invest in the technology. As a result, more networks need to be connected before there is full coverage.
However, Apple announced late last year that they would support RCS technology and with iOS 18 they now support both RCS and RBM (Rich Business Messaging).
The SMS fallback feature ensures that messages are always delivered even if the recipient’s device does not support RCS. At GatewayAPI, we are working to support RCS as the technology matures and becomes more globally available.
Fight against AIT and other threats
One of the biggest challenges in the telecom industry today is AIT (Artificially Inflated Traffic). In short, artificial traffic is created with the help of bots that, for example, ask a sign-up/login flow on a website for OTP codes, using mobile numbers that the fraudsters have a financial incentive to drive traffic to.
Like all scams, this area is evolving rapidly, and while it used to be common to see attacks generating 100,000-300,000 AIT messages in one day, it’s more common for scammers to generate a few thousand messages a day over a longer period today. The end result is the same, but it’s much harder to detect as it blends together with the real SMS traffic.
At GatewayAPI, we have developed tools such as geo permissions to help our customers minimize the risk of fraud and have taken a number of other steps to combat threats of all kinds.
At the same time, we closely follow the regulations that characterize the market, which also allows us to advise our customers on this in depth.
The future of global communication
The telecom industry faces a number of challenges, but also many exciting opportunities. New technologies like RCS and advanced anti-fraud solutions show potential, but there are still many unanswered questions.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, approximately 90% of large global enterprises will use communication platforms as a service (CPaaS) to improve customer experience and engagement, up from 50% in 2023. In addition, generative AI will play a significant assisting role in enhancing customer communication experiences.
It gives some perspective on the future of global communication and the need for good communication platforms and which technologies will be prominent.
We will continue to shape the industry both through our solutions focused on making technology-enabled communication easy and through our collaboration with other industry players.