Consequently, Viettel – the Vietnam biggest operator – is focusing to attract more A2P traffic to monetize this business. In addition, being aware of grey route impact, Viettel was the first operator in Vietnam deploying A2P firewall to stop this revenue loss, assuring a clean market for prospective partners to cooperate.

Vietnam A2P Market has shown many factors boosting the A2P traffic in recent years.

The world is watching two different trends within text messaging: declining trend of P2P (Peer-to-Peer, text between end users) and quick growing trend of A2P/P2A (text between mobile subscribers and applications). Global P2P reached its highest volume at 5.6 trillion SMS in 2013 and then started falling with a -7% CAGR for the period of 2013-2018. The main reason driving the decline is IP-based messaging, which has been emerging quickly and expanding significantly all over the world. On the other hand, A2P is in its golden era, being forecasted to have a 6% CAGR from 2013 to 2018. Mobile identity and Internet of Things are keys to growth of the sector. Many OTT and social messaging applications, for example, are using A2P as their first choice of mobile number verification. Banking transactions or other confirmation types are sent as text message to mobile. The two trends above are going the same as in Vietnam. The market has shown many factors boosting the A2P traffic in recent years. The growing ratios of smartphones and 3G users, which are 27% and 30% respectively (2014-2015), are helping Vietnam topping the South East Asia area. Moreover, number of OTT and social networks users reaching is increasing with fast pace, such as Facebook with 30 million users, or Viber with over 12 million ones).

A2P Partners can reach Viettel’s 9+ affiliates in other countries by only one contract, one connection.

Taking this opportunity of A2P, Vietnam operators are trying to monetize the revenue of A2P to offset that of P2P, which has been decreasing since 2013. Viettel, the leading operator with over 50 million subscribers, is attracting a huge volume of A2P monthly by cooperating with domestic and international hubs and aggregators. Viettel also offers attractive discount rates based on levels of monthly volume. Viettel Bulk SMS system supports SMPP connection and alphanumeric CLI that can display a brand name of originator on receiver’s handset. One of the most advantages that A2P partners highly value when connecting to Viettel is that they can also reach Viettel’s 9+ affiliates in other countries by only one contract, one connection. This advantage reduces great time and effort for Viettel’s partners trying to connect to Viettel’s network extensions, which are Metfone (Cambodia), Unitel (Laos), Telemor (Timor Leste), Bitel (Peru), Natcom (Haiti), Movitel (Mozambique), Nexttel (Cameroon), Halotel (Tanzania), Lumitel (Burundi) and counting. One connection with one contract can help partners to reach a huge number of customers (70+ millions in 10+ countries) of Viettel Group.

Another important aspect of A2P is grey route messaging. This is the biggest issue preventing the growth of A2P revenue since it is not easy to control and eliminate. A testing campaign was launched by Viettel in all Vietnam networks has found that approximately 70% of test cases are sent from grey routes. The cost of grey routes is nearly half of official ones and it certainly attracts more traffic than that of operators can have. Seriously taking the issue into account, Viettel has successfully deployed a firewall system that can monitor, detect and block any grey routes from domestic or international channels. Viettel hopes that the firewall will prevent all revenue leakage and help its valued partners doing A2P business in a clean market.

To learn more about Viettel’s A2P Messaging Service: Click here and contact us via email or phone:

• Email: iproduct@viettel.com.vn
• Telephone number: +84 462731804