Over-the-top (OTT) business messaging traffic is expected to reach 375 billion messages in 2028, up from 100 billion messages in 2023, reducing the quality of SMS networks and costing telecoms operators in Nigeria and other parts of the world more than $3 billion in SMS business messaging revenue over the next five years.
In a new report, Juniper Research stated that pricing is critical to OTT business messaging growth, noting that lower SMS network quality is being driven by the increased prevalence of fraud, while operators’ SMS costs continue to rise to sustain revenue despite declining demand for business messaging traffic.
An OTT media service (also known as a streaming platform) is a type of media service that is delivered to viewers directly over the Internet. Amazon, Netflix, WhatsApp, and Skype are examples of OTT players.
To capitalize on the plateauing SMS industry, the report advises OTT app developers to implement pricing tactics that divert high-spending corporations away from traditional SMS channels. These solutions must divide traffic based on its use, charging corporations a premium for mission-critical traffic, such as MFA (Multi-factor Authentication).
While it predicted significant OTT messaging growth in retail, Juniper predicts a significant increase in OTT business messaging spend for retail, from $790 million globally in 2023 to more than $2.6 billion by 2028.
It recommended OTT messaging companies to include data from other retail channels into their OTT business messaging operations. It stated that by doing so, these vendors will be able to present their apps as a crucial channel for retailers’ eCommerce strategies.
According to it, in order to maximize the channel’s value proposition, OTT messaging companies must integrate payment capabilities directly into apps.
In 2022, Nigerians exchanged approximately 25.93 billion text texts domestically.
The Nigerian Communications Commission reported in its ‘2022 Subscriber/Network Data Report’ that the total number of text messages sent and received increased by 28.82 percent year on year.
According to the study, around 14.09 billion SMS messages were sent and approximately 11.84 billion were received.
It was also revealed that MTN had the largest amount of text messages sent and received.
“The total number of national SMS both sent and received as of December 2022 was 25,928,704,567,” according to the report. This represents a 28.82% increase over the total SMS sent and received in 2021, which was 20,126,551,822 SMS.
“There was a 48.84 percent increase in the number of SMS sent in 2022 compared to 2021.” In contrast, the number of SMS received in 2022 climbed by 11.06 percent over that of 2021.
“In the year 2022, MTN recorded the highest count of SMS received and sent which stood at 8,738,690,150 and 8,323,722,485, respectively.”
According to the data, the overall number of international SMS sent as of December 2022 was 59,571,547, while the total number of SMS received was 459,329,782.
