MEFTV speaks to Tim Houlihan,  Commercial lead for A2P Messaging Development for Europe at Telefónica and MEF EMEA Board Member during the Messaging & SMS World in London where he discussed the future of A2P SMS, describing Telefónica’s three pronged approach as “secure, monetise and enrich”.

“The enrichment part is looking at what comes next – how do we take the existing A2P SMS channels and layer in other interesting things, like IP, RCS, is a big buzzword, messaging as a platform, all those directions…”

“I feel its important that especially as RCS is going to be a brand driven success story it needs to be very simplistic for the brands and those people that wish to leverage this channel outside the ecosystem of messaging… It means change for the industry but we have to cross those bridges.

I think security is still a very very strong use-case for A2P messaging – SMS is still this absolute ubiquitous channel that has a high level of trust, and people basically know how to use it, it’s on every phone – it’s not going away very quickly.”

Tim goes on to discuss the problems facing the industry like SIM farms and other kinds of fraud.

Watch the full video below.