TECHNICAL
Despite this, Juniper Research approaches this announcement from Apple with some caution. There is scepticism as to the extent of which Apple will support RCS, and there is also ambiguity over whether there will be support for RBM (RCS business messaging). There are also still barriers to overcome in order for RCS to be widely adopted within the A2P messaging market, including the uniformity of monetisation models among operators, and the process for brand verification. With this, Juniper Research anticipates that in 2024, Apple will launch its support of RCS for P2P communications. However, it will take some more time for the effect of this to be felt in the business messaging market. 5G Data Roaming Traffic to Necessitate Acceleration of BCE 2.0 Protocol Adoption Despite the GSMA’s BCE (Billing and Charging Evolution) being announced in 2019, fewer than 100 operators leverage the protocol’s benefits, with the vast majority opting to continue to depend on TAP (Transferred Account Procedure). There are a number of reasons for this slow uptake, ranging from uncertainty over BCE 2.0, and the high investment costs associated with supporting the protocol.
The development of BCE 2.0 was focused on enabling operators to effectively monetise 5G standalone
The introduction of interoperability will have significant impacts for the wider A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging market, as it will eliminate the constraint of fragmentation on the EU’s OTT business messaging market, with enterprises able to interact with consumers, regardless of the OTT messenger app used. In turn, this greatly expands the value of OTT business messaging, and its capacity to compete with other established A2P
connections, as the GSMA found that its predecessor, BCE 1.4 was insufficient for these purposes. This was due to the DDR (Detail Data Records) and BSR (Billing Statement Report) provided, which lacked the necessary quality parameters, and definitions for the effective monetisation of 5G standalone connections. Therefore,
the BCE 2.0 corrects these issues, introducing a different architecture.
messaging channels such as SMS services provided by operators.
However, with BCE 2.0 expected to become operational in July 2024, Juniper Research expects the uptake of BCE to gather significant momentum. Instrumental in driving adoption will be the ever-increasing number of 5G roaming connections, with Juniper Research predicting that the total number of 5G roaming connections will rise from 35 million in 2023 to 77 million by the end of 2024; demonstrating a growth of 220% over the next 12 months. This growth in 5G roaming traffic will drive the adoption of BCE 2.0 in 2024, as it will exacerbate operator revenue leakage caused by TAP, which is ineffective for 5G monetisation. TAP results in revenue leakage as operators are limited in the volumes of data they can exchange in TAP files, a major issue when using the protocol for 5G connections, which produce vast amounts of data per connection. Moreover, as 5G roaming traffic continues to increase in 2024, operators will face growing consequences for not adopting the BCE protocol. Most significantly, operators will be unable to maximise revenue from enterprises’ 5G roaming traffic, as the flexibility of BCE enables operators to deploy new charging models, that apply premium charges against 5G roaming traffic. Specifically, BCE will enable operators to apply differential pricing for roaming access to different network slices on 5G standalone networks. These network slices will have different KPIs for quality of service, such as latency, allowing enterprises to optimise their purchases of roaming access for their needs. This will allow operators to maximise revenue, finding the optimal price equilibrium for different roaming connections. Furthermore, this revenue maximisation can be extended to individual devices, with operators able
Due to the proliferation of omnichannel communications, the announcement from the DMA to provide interoperability between multiple OTT channels will not only reduce a key weakness of the OTT messaging market, but it will also impact the wider business messaging ecosystem. In particular, this will affect RCS (Rich Communication Services), a competing, operator-led messaging channel, with capabilities beyond SMS and MMS. Owing to pressure from the DMA, Apple has recently announced that it will support the universal profile for RCS. The deployment of RCS has historically been very staggered, and therefore, this announcement has implications for the messaging market, notably in regions with a high penetration of iOS devices. There will be a significant increase in the number of RCS-capable subscribers globally, thus encouraging enterprise adoption of RCS.
Figure 10: Number of RCS-capable Subscribers 2023-2028 (m), with and without Apple RCS Support
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Volume 46 No.1 March 2024
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