In his talk at last month’s MEF Connects Business Messaging event, Nick Lane presented a stark warning to the industry – the current trend in introducing sky high termination rates might bring short term gain, but it will damage long term revenues for the industry.
Not just because brands will walk away when there are more cost-effective options, but because the increase in fraud that these termination rates is bringing to the industry, means they will walk away due to a lack of trust.
The MobileSquared report, Global A2P SMS: The complete overview 2017-2027, reveals that since mid-2021 the average cost to send an A2P SMS internationally has doubled from $0.033 to $0.07071. In that time, 90% of mobile operators have increased their international SMS fee, with over one-third of mobile operators (36.4%) increasing their rates by over 100%; and 3.9% of mobile operators increasing their rate in excess of 500%.
This means brands are forced to pay over $0.25 to send a single SMS into particular markets, resulting in these brands now seeking alternative channels to distribute their mission-critical customer communications.
The industry must make a change
