Tekelec turns SMS deployments on their head

SMS router leverages FDA to drive lower cost per SMS message.

In Q1 09, Verizon Wireless reported that its customers sent or recieved an average of 1.4 billion text messages each day, totaling more than 127 billion text messages. What's more, Verizon Wireless customers sent nearly 2.1 billion picture and video messages and completed 48.6 million music and video downloads during the quarter.

The traffic traversing Verizon Wireless’ network along with that of other large mobile players such as AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile has led Frost and Sullivan to forecast that global SMS message volume is growing at a CAGR of 15.6 percent (2007-2011). However, SMS revenues are only growing at a CAGR of 5.9 percent over the same period.

Figure 1. Global SMS traffic.
Source: Tekelec

Figure 2. Global SMS Revenues.
Source: Tekelec

Still, the increased momentum around SMS is driving wireless operators to rethink how they handle SMS in their respective networks.

Enter Tekelec and its SMS router. With the goal of helping operators handle SMS traffic while keeping costs down, the vendor claims it can achieve these goals by using a First Delivery Attempt (FDA) method for Mobile Originated (MO)/Application-Originated (AO) messages.

By incorporating flexible routing rules the router enables traffic to be routed on any SMS parameter: sender, recipient, SMSC address, data coding schemes, mobile switch center and message content.

Alan Pascoe, senior product marketing manager for Tekelec, argues that the problem with legacy SMSC was in their overall approach to distributing and storing SMS messages. And Pascoe should know. Prior to taking his post Tekelec, Pascoe previously was an SMS service designer for O2 wireless.

“Routers have been around for a number of years,” he said. “A traditional SMSC leverages a Store and Forward approach, but what a router does is completely turning it around and goes forward and then store because chances of me sending you a text message in a FDA format are a lot higher these days than it was five to 10 years ago.”

Cap and grow

Given the large investments wireless operators have already made in their existing SMSC networks, the SMS router and the overall Tekelec SMS network concept allow the service provider to cap and grow their existing SMSC investments.

In so doing, the SMS Router can help service providers extend their existing investments while making a transition to the next-gen router platform. What’s more, the SMS router supports SS7 and SIGTRAN signaling as well as CAMEL and DIAMETER billing protocols.

Figure 3. Tekelec's SMS Router.
Source: Tekelec

FDA is the key enabler to help wireless operators make the the legacy-to-next gen SMS network transition.

By using FDA, the SMS router can free up the legacy SMSC capacity and enable the operator to handle about 15 percent of stored message traffic until it can be delivered. An existing SMSC is required to only handle the remaining 15 percent that require storage for future delivery.

To provide a better picture of what benefits they can gain by making the switch to a next-gen SMS network, Tekelec developed a business case in collaboration with Frost and Sullivan to help wireless operators profitably deploy the SMS router and adopt its overall SMS network concept. These business cases include four distinct elements: SMS Offload SMS First Delivery Attempt; SMS Offload – Voting Traffic; Blocking SMS MO Spoofing; and the combination of all three in one SMS set.

In a SMS offload application, Tekelec claims a wireless operator could potentially reduce the current SMSC load by 80-90 percent. This load reduction, however, depends on FDA success ratio.

Tekelec claims that this cap and grow strategy allows a wireless operator to realize 60 percent in savings over a traditional SMSC. Opting for a SMS Network with a SMS router would cost only $0.9 million versus spending $2.2 million on a new SMSC.

“The fourth benefit of the SMS network concept is where a wireless operator can combine the offload and the voting offload applications,” Pascoe said. “You can pretty much use the same equipment to deliver both of those savings from the voting and from the first delivery point of view.”

Breaking SMS bottlenecks

In bridging the legacy and next-gen SMS worlds, the SMS router can help service providers overcome traditional SMS capacity bottlenecks by leveraging load balancing and throughput control techniques. Wireless operators can support high-end SMS customers with the ability to prioritize traffic based on premium SLAs.

One application where traffic flow prioritization will come in handy is televoting.

Televoting is not just vendor speak, however. Verisign’s Mobile Media Division, which provides Internet infrastructure services, predicts that mobile voting and other interactions with the government via SMS will become commonplace.

However, one of the common problems wireless operators have in dealing with voting applications is that existing SMSCs can’t handle voting traffic spikes and the ability balance loads throughout the SMS network.

“Using a router approach to conduct voting offload has some distinct advantages over using an SMSC,” said Pascoe. “Typically, this sort of traffic is delivered in a huge spike, but with an SMSC you need to buffer all of those messages which can overload meaning that messages are dropped because the buffers fill the filter quickly.”

In a televoting application, the SMS router can manage peak traffic control while preventing legacy SMSC overload by delivering traffic directly to the application. This means that SMS traffic can be delivered to a part of the subscriber’s handset.

Pascoe adds that by untangling bottlenecks, the operator can cut opex costs by ensuring customer happiness.

“Most of the savings you’ll actually get is in the brand awareness and the reduction of customer care complaints,” Pascoe said. “When you look into an operator’s business model in terms of customer care complaints, they usually attribute a dollar value to each particular complaint.”