CTIA 2008: Tekelec scales up the SMS pole March 31, 2008 Telecommunications Magazine
It's Free! 31 - Apr. March 31, 2008 There seems to be no shortage of new all-you-can-eat short messaging service (SMS) text messaging offers. Take Sprint"s Simply Everything plan. For US$99 a month, Sprint enables consumers to do all the voice and SMS texting a person could ever want. Such plans are contributing to the explosive growth of the SMS and mobile messaging market. A recent study by Portio Research confirms continued healthy SMS growth.
ABI predicts the overall mobile messaging market will grow to become a US$212 billion market opportunity by 2013, while Portio Research argues SMS will be least a US$67 billion revenue opportunity during the same period. See: Viva SMS! Mobile messaging at an innovation tipping point ) Yet while it"s clear SMS growth is showing no signs of slowing down, wireless operator margins have not grown with the wireless consumer"s appetite for low-priced service sets.
Industry research points out SMS revenues will only see a 28 percent increase from 2007 to 2012. This means all-you-can-eat plans by Sprint and other wireless operators, coupled with increasing competition, will minimize the rise of new SMS revenue. Figure 1. Legacy SMSC Network The fact that the backbone of the SMS network, the Short Messaging Service Center, is starting to show its age adds to the problem.
The current SMS architecture is based on an architecture designed 15 to 17 years ago, and the world has moved significantly on since then," said Alan Pascoe, senior manager for product marketing at Tekelec. At Tekelec we have been thinking how to best help operators scale up their SMS networks from when a message comes into a signaling network and when it leaves that signaling network or leaves it via an IP port via an application."
Tekelec is offering its network-based SMS solution to help wireless operators scale their SMS service suites more effectively. It claims its EAGLE 5 Integrated Signaling System and TekMedia portfolio can enhance routing efficiency by leveraging the core signaling network intelligence to analyze and determine the best path to route SMS traffic. Overcoming legacy limitations But Tekelec"s solution is not just about scale.
The product provides greater flexibility in terms of network control, message handling and new services. One of the legacy SMSC"s drawbacks is its store and forward design. To accommodate the early wireless networks" shortcomings (i.e., SMSCs kept messages in a retry mode until a phone came on or a user roamed into a better coverage area. Today, users expect their SMS messages to get through almost instantaneously. An estimated 90 percent of messages get through on the first delivery attempt.
Figure 2. FDA via TekMedia SMS Router "SMS has gone from being best-case delivery to having SMS messages delivered in a matter of seconds vs. Pascoe said. Unlike legacy store and forward approaches, Tekelec"s SMS solution uses its own routing techniques to deliver messages to their intended recipients. Since it"s a modular platform, a wireless operator can add other advanced services to the platform such as Firewall SPAM control, prepaid billing interface, and SIP-based integration along with management of CDR generation.
See: Keeping attacks on SMS at bay ) The firewall SPAM control function, for example, can detect the more elusive spam techniques including spoofing, phishing and flooding. Finally, Tekelec"s SMS solution has flexible message handling. Complete with a rules-based engine for filtering, monitoring and logic, the system performs global title translation routing based on the analysis of the sender and destination party included in the mobile application part layer.
Pay-as-you-grow approach Developed at a time when wireless coverage was unpredictable, legacy SMSCs come with a number of limitations that inhibit wireless operators from scaling their respective SMS networks without expensive forklift upgrades.
As wireless operators realized they needed to scale their SMS networks to support growing subscriber bases, their choices were limited to installing a new SMSC or expanding signaling bandwidth.
Taking into account the large investment wireless operators have sunk into their legacy SMSC networks, Tekelec"s modular approach allows them to scale SMS networks on an incremental, pay-as-you-grow basis. A wireless operator has the choice of adding incremental capacity to its existing network all the while supplementing or replacing SMSCs as needed. The TekMedia router. SMSCs," Pascoe said.
Typically, we can deploy the TekMedia router to do the first delivery attempt then if it"s not successful we can forward it to the legacy equipment." March 27, 2008 Motorola unveils common wireless broadband platform for WiMAX, LTE Exclusive Webinar Optical Transport Is Going to POT Thursday, April 17, 2008 11:30 a.m.
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