Sms home routing

SMS home routing is a term used in mobile telephony referring to cases in which the responsibility for the delivery of a Short message service (SMS) is assumed by the receiving mobile operator rather than the sending mobile operator. Mobile operators use SMS home routing to control the reception of SMS messages into their network, in all cross-network SMS traffic, including roaming situations.

Introduction

SMS home routing is a new architecture where the ‘recipient’ mobile operator takes control of the final delivery of text messages to the subscriber. In the current SMS delivery infrastructure, the sending operator has control and full visibility over the delivery of the message, being able to communicate with its subscriber whether the message has been delivered or not. When the sending operator looses this control, the transparency in the message delivery is compromised, as well as the delivery itself.

Although the home routing system is enhanced in roaming situations, it applies to all cross-network SMS traffic, which includes domestic and international messaging traffic. Technically speaking, a home routing system can be deployed by installing a patch to its Home Location Register (HLR), as well as the deployment of SMS routers in their network.

Although still in early stages, the SMS home routing system has already been deployed by some operators in Europe and Asia Pacific. Some problems have been already noticed by companies offering services in the mobile sector and there is concern about how passing control to the sending operator causes the quality of SMS to diminish.

Potential Benefits

By implementing SMS home routing, the receiving operator has a control point for messaging delivery, which would enable it to offer its subscribers value-added services that might include antispam, auto reply, parental control and divert and auto copy. Theoretically operators can charge a premium for these features and therefore generate new revenue streams.

Mobile operators might use SMS home routing as a filtering system, especially to prevent spam. This, however, has to be a transparent process especially when communicating this implementation to the operator’s roaming partners.

A number of mobile messaging infrastructure providers are legitimately offering products in this space, including Telsis, Acision and Intervoice solutions from Convergys.

Issues & Risks

By implementing SMS home routing, the SMS delivery ecosystem could change dramatically, causing quality issues. If this new architecture becomes a standard hardware deployment in mobile networks, then the universal reliability of SMS messaging (congested networks or outages notwithstanding) may disappear. Risks when implementing SMS home routing might be:

Decrease on the reliability of SMS means loss of consumer trust

The SMS infrastructure with home routing could reduce the quality of SMS by allowing the receiving operator to filter messages, meaning there is a risk that not all messages will be delivered. This could potentially create a situation where delivery receipts issued by the sending operator are not valid anymore.

For the subscriber, this could mean that messages sent and paid for aren’t guaranteed to arrive. Direct consequences might be the reduction of SMS interactions between subscribers as well as a loss in consumer confidence in SMS interaction with commercial entities such as TV voting and mobile marketing campaigns.

Last but not least, complaints from subscribers of are likely to increase significantly, due to the lack of reliability and incorrect billing.

Impact on the nascent enterprise SMS market

The lack of reliability and transparency could also impact the growth of enterprise SMS. The restrictions in SMS delivery are an issue especially to enterprise customers, as there is a potential that enterprise SMS traffic might be jeopardized.

Industry sectors using text messaging as a mechanism to alert consumers with emergency and critical information could also suffer from lack of delivery. This would result in less usage of the SMS messaging service, or even companies considering switching to other technologies.

Lack of transparency among roaming partners

When a mobile operator implements a Home Routing system without informing roaming partners, a transparency issue can also arise in regards to the delivery of messages, as well as the fees charged.

References

* GSM Association [http://www.gsmworld.com GSM Association ]