Throughout 2024, XConnect has remained laser-focused on our mission to restore trust in telecoms – a challenge that is being increasingly addressed by key players throughout the industry. Global carriers, vendors and industry associations are all taking note of the role they need to play in mitigating fraud, and this has been the driving force for action throughout 2024.
Restore Trust Initiative
In the past year, we’ve seen the launch of two dedicated industry organisations as part of the i3Forum’s Restore Trust initiative – One Consortium, representing the industry, and the Global Informal Regulatory Antifraud Forum (GIRAF), representing the national regulatory authorities. These are two key initiatives for the industry and are reflective of growing concerns around global voice and messaging spoofing, scamming and general fraud. These initiatives can enable a collaborative approach between industry and regulators to implement the most viable solutions and tools.
The DNA of XConnect’s and also of our parent company, Somos, is very much entwined in collaborative engagement with the industry and regulators at a global level. We believe passionately in an important goal of trusted communications with ‘green ticks’, verified CLIs and the calling party brand name and logos displayed.
With this in mind, I’m proud to be a board member for the i3Forum as well as an interim council member for One Consortium and actively engaged in the Restore Trust activities. On top of this, XConnect is a staunch supporter of the work of MEF, with our XConnect colleague, Tim Ward, elected as a Board Member and Co-Vice Chair.
XConnect Services for Fraud Mitigation
In addition to engaging with the work being done at an industry level, we’ve also focused on helping our customers reduce fraud across both voice and messaging in 2024. Our numbering intelligence datasets are being increasingly used to help manage fraud mitigation. This shift has led to a strong growth of our core datasets including our Global Number Range (GNR) and Do Not Originate (DNO) datasets, which are part of our suite of validation services. With a growing number of countries adopting DNO, we are integrating these into our core datasets, including the latest addition of the Somos USA DNO for SMS database, as obligated by the FCC this year.
As a result, we’ve seen our revenue grow by 28% in the last year.
Beyond this notable growth, we’re pleased to see our efforts in supporting the fight against fraud being recognised by the wider industry. This year, XConnect was awarded "Most Innovative SMS Fraud Mitigation Solution" at the Juniper Research Future Digital Awards based on our GNR solution for artificial inflation of traffic (AIT). As you can imagine, this is a huge boost for our Product, Operations and Support teams, who work so hard behind the scenes to ensure our datasets are accurate and our customers receive the best possible service.
XConnect Core Services
This focus on fraud and restoring trust is in parallel to the significant growth of our core global services – Number Portability Query, Live Status and Global Number Range, which continue to deliver trusted number information services to the largest operators and providers in both messaging and voice for routing, validation and identity.
I am extremely proud of what the XConnect team has achieved in 2024, and our growth is a true testament to the team’s unwavering commitment. As fraud instances continue to rise, collaboration and knowledge sharing across the entire telecoms industry will be key to protecting the future of voice and messaging. We’re fully focused on supporting this as we look ahead.
Telecoms fraud is changing the ways that consumers are interacting with communications channels and how regulators are introducing new obligations. Without proper systems in place for traffic validation, users will turn to communication platforms they consider to be more reliable. This has the potential to cause irrevocable losses and reputational damage to the voice and SMS industry. As the telecoms landscape continues to evolve, 2025 will see anti-fraud measures ramp up and a shift in how businesses communicate.
Here’s what we will be paying attention to in the year ahead:
Expanding Our Anti-Fraud Offering
We’ll be kickstarting 2025 with the planned launch of our brand-new Risk and Fraud Portfolio, driven by the increasing levels of fraud the industry is experiencing. The portfolio will cover both voice and messaging, providing additional datasets consisting of operator information and industry level information to help address evolving risks.
As an industry-led organisation, and driven by ensuring trust in telecoms, this is a logical next step for XConnect as we expand our fraud services available to customers with industry recognised datasets.
MNO API Advancements
MNO APIs have experienced huge expansion over the past year, driven by CAMARA and the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative, which enables developers to break into new markets. The growth of these MNO APIs has resulted in them becoming ever more prevalent in the industry, leading to major announcements such as the recent Ericsson joint venture.
At XConnect, we’ll be growing the use of MNO APIs for risk and identity. The goal is to help both the industry and enterprise, financial, fintech and ecommerce sectors to improve on their risk management services.
The Growth of RBM
The rise of rich business messaging (RBM) will, of course, be a big trend next year. This growth received a major boost, with the announcement by Apple to support RCS and RBM, as well as the increase of RBM compliant networks and devices.
RBM will help expand the business messaging market as well as provide a more secure communications channel. In 2025, we can expect increased regulation and continued challenges in the SMS portion of business messaging driven by increasing levels of fraud including AIT. However, the overall business messaging market will continue to grow. Led by all the efforts from MEF, One Consortium and GIRAF, we’re likely to see new collaborative initiatives around improving trust and reducing fraud. We look forward to supporting increasing growth and migration within this field as RBM brings new use cases into focus.
Additional Authentication Methods
As we look ahead, another core focus for 2025 will be on delivering voice and messaging authentication beyond SMS OTPs. This is something we need to work together on as an industry, with the end goal to achieve branded calling and branded messaging (something which RBM is ready to address). This is where consumers receive a verified green tick around the phone number, the brand name, logo, etc to establish whether the number is originating from a legitimate source.
The introduction of additional authentication and verification methods will be a fundamental part of restoring trust in telecoms. However, it's important to remember that this will not happen overnight. Many steps will be needed along the way and XConnect is committed to helping the industry achieve this.
2025 and the Fight Against Fraud
As a neutral provider of critical information for the communications industry, the DNA of what we bring to our customers is centred around proactively participating at a global industry level to overcome the biggest telecoms challenges. Our relentless drive to protect our industry from fraud and restore trust will continue in 2025 and beyond.
We are living in some of the most dynamic times in both voice and messaging ecosystems with challenges, developments and opportunity on a scale not seen in over a decade. We are your trusted partner to help you navigate this journey. I look forward to seeing what the new year brings.
