Global annual SMS firewall revenue to reach $4.1 billion by 2026

Andy Pye 29 November 2021  

A Juniper Research study finds that total SMS firewall revenue will increase from $911 million in 2021 to $4.1 billion in 2026, representing an absolute growth of 346%.

Supplied by third parties, SMS firewalls sit within operator networks, enabling the real-time monitoring of network traffic, enhancing operator capabilities to block fraudulent traffic and minimise revenue loss.

The report urges operators to implement advanced SMS filtering, with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to mitigate the constantly evolving tactics of fraudulent players. A failure to adopt firewalls with these capabilities will leave operators open to diminished revenue from business messaging, as fraudsters mask business messaging traffic to avoid termination fees.

The volume of business messaging traffic monitored by SMS firewalls will increase from 3.1 trillion in 2021 to 4.4 trillion in 2026. This represents absolute growth of 45%, as operators increase their investment in advanced analytics, such as natural language processing abilities, that enable the efficient identification of business use cases in the content of the message.

Grey route traffic

The research predicts that SMS firewalls will reduce operator losses to grey route traffic – concealment of lucrative business messaging traffic within the less profitable channel of P2P messages. By minimising the profit to be made from the successful transmission of grey route traffic, SMS firewall implementation will reduce operator losses to fraud from $5.6 billion in 2021 to $922 million by 2026.

Research author Scarlett Woodford remarked: “SMS firewalls will limit the possibilities of grey routes by elevating the prices associated with concealing fraudulent traffic, in order to avoid network detection. This will make paying for traffic termination via legitimate routes a more cost-effective option, as fraudulent players will struggle to justify the increased costs associated with grey route transmission.”

SMS Firewalls: Key Opportunities, Competitor Leaderboard & Market Forecasts 2021-2026.

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