Leading Infrastructure Vendors Equipping Operators with VoLTE and RCS to Overcome OTT Challengers

The eager acceptance of OTT applications is greatly expanding the overall messaging market and comes partly at the expense of legacy text messaging. ABI Research finds the deployment of competitive VoLTE and RCS services will help operators retain 65% of their former messaging market share. However, the many free and low-cost alternatives available to consumers are still a worrying concern for operators. Operators can use VoLTE and RCS services, ultimately to retain their subscribers, and also increase revenues that will come with the many innovations from third party developers.The quality of services that VoLTE and RCS can provide to their customers will be as table stakes in the mobile device, and prove compelling to subscribers.

ABI Research’s research analyst, Sabir Rafiq comments, “Operators are the key drivers of RCS. When they adopt VoLTE with RCS enriched services natively embedded into the mobile, they will in time develop competitive advantages. This will also attract and retain customers with the quality and services they provide.”

Rafiq continues, “Not all of the increase in OTT messaging and voice traffic represents lost revenue to operators. Operators still have a commanding share of voice and messaging but the OTTs are increasing their audience, the operator share is decreasing, and we clearly identify the impact of OTT services.”

ABI Research finds that the leading infrastructure vendors, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and NSN all have compelling RCS solutions. There are also various specialists with RCS-based solutions available for operators. Companies like, Acision RCS, BroadSoft, Syniverse, Kineto and more also provide the Mobile Network Operators the means to overpower OTTs in the market.

These findings are from ABI Research’s “Alternatives to IMS-based RCS/RCS-e” report and are part of the Telco API Research Service.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 70+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.