Telemedia Magazine - Issue 71

monetizing connected consumers

IN THIS ISSUE

ISSUE 71

PSD3

Preparing for when PSD3 arrives in 2025

Sticky and sweet

Online Safety

Content dominates VAS and DCB –but it has to be sticky to hit that sweet spot

As the UK passes its Online Safety Act, how does telemedia respond?

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06

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BILLING & PAYMENT

DCB in Europe sees explosive growth IN THIS ISSUE TO THRILL across a range of sectors as it gains 08 LICENSED How a Payment Institution Licence is reshaping DCB in Germany an identity and better pay-outs Carrier billing (DCB) goes from strength to strength worldwide, with better payouts in many regions, a ability to buy more things and, in Germany at least, getting its own brand name. This once forgotten payment tool is now exploding.

Increasingly recognised by consumers and merchants, DCB is poised to become a mainstream payment tool, is set to start to appear in mobile wallets and could well soon be used to buy quasi-physical and physical goods.

So what’s changed? There are a number of factors impacting its use across Europe and MENA. According to Berndt Picher, mobile payment specialist at DIMOCO, DCB is already very strong in certain markets as it always has been, but increasingly is being seen in new sectors. He lists iGaming, sports bet>> 3 VALUE-ADDED SERVICES

10 ENGAGEMENT PARTY

Bringing engagement and payments together in new ways

12 SMS: KING OR KNAVE?

SMS still dominates messaging, but is falling quality bringing that to a close?

14 OTT STARTS TO PAY ITS WAY

As SMS growth slows, OTT messaging is having a moment

18 WINNING WITH ESPORTS

Is eSports the sticky, global-straddiling content the market needs?

19 CONTENT KING OF MENA

What kinds of content is reshaping VAS in the booming MENA region

20 HARNESSING CDNs

Content delivery networks – key to a better, faster world?

24 DCB FRAUD ON THE ROPES? What falling DCB fraud means

WAVE OF FRAUD Quality, quantity and stickiness drive 25 NEW New frauds to watch out for in 2024 the growing VAS content market 30 MEET THE PEOPLE...

The value-added services (VAS) content market is booming post Covid as users stick to the smartphone fun habits they developed in lockdown. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t challenges aplenty in growing the content market..

There is huge demand for content, but it has to be of increasingly high quality and with a very rapid refresh rate to keep users paying for it.

Video, gaming and eSports all dominate the market, but keeping pace with an audience

with dwindling attention spans and shrinking personal finances is keeping many a content provider awake at night.

Here we share how to make it work.

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

>> 16

... Rohit Maheshwari, head of strategy and products at Subex

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COMPANIES YOU SHOULD BE DOING BUSINESS WITH! See page 27

BILLING & PAYMENT

DCB in Europe << 1 ting, transport, EV charging and vending machines as examples of where DCB in Europe is starting to gain ground.

Elsewhere in the world, the payment mechanism’s ubiquity – everyone has a mobile with money on it, even if they don’t have a bank account – means it has become the de facto payment tool for everything from streaming services to paying bills.

DCB IN EUROPE

Focussing on Europe, the recent Carrier Billing Forum in Amsterdam and this October’s World Telemedia in Marbella both showed just how far carrier billing has come.

DIMOCO, for example, already runs DCB payments for bike hire and EV charging and is one of many payment providers in Europe that is looking to take DCB into esports and sports betting.

According to Gary Corbett, founder of Dynamic Mobile Billing, DCB’s success in these sectors is likely to soon spread. “You have to look at what makes DCB popular where it is used today: it is convenient, easy to use and everyone has access to it – anyone with a mobile can use it,” he says.

“The opportunity is in extending this message to other sectors. It already converts seven to tentimes better than credit card and so betting and esports operators already see that it is a great onboarding tool. They use it to get the consumer to put some funds in then they can convert them to another payment method down the line.”

The drawback is always the revenue share between operators and merchants – which in some territories is a high as 60% in favour of the MNO. This needs to change to make it more appealing in more advanced developed markets in Europe.

However, Europe’s MNOs seem to be getting the message. Driven

by the hugely competitive nature of the European digital payments market, operators are starting to see that not only is there an opportunity with DCB, but also if it isn’t made to be competitive they could lose most of their carrier billing business to other payment tools.

The first move to eliminate this lies in making for more reasonable payouts. Amelia Newsome-

Davis, head of payments and messaging at Orange France, says that carriers had, in many cases, got over the outpayments issue, with many merchants now receiving 90% and often 95% of the fee. “However,” she said, “now we have to adapt DCB for the overall modern

payments ecosystem. We need to increase awareness among businesses and consumers, we need to tackle fraud and we need to brand and promote DCB to improve take up.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

What is holding it back, however, is a lack of knowledge among both consumers and merchants >> 4

How digital wallets shake up payments The UK is on the brink of a digital payments transformation, with digital wallet purchases set to surpass card transactions within 10 years. And while operators look to reshape DCB into a mainstream market payment tool, all eyes have to be on how that can integrate with wallets.

According to research by FreedomPay and Retail Economics, around a fifth (17%) of retail, leisure and hospitality spending is currently made through digital wallets, compared to more than half (55.7%) by plastic and a fifth (18.8%) by cash.

This is set to increase to £127.7bn in 2027/28 (£72.5bn currently). By 2033, the share of digital wallet payments will likely more than double to 39.7% to £210bn.

In the next five years, the value of digital wallet use is set to surge by 76.3% – well ahead of other payment methods including transactions through loyalty points and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services, while more traditional payment methods of cash and card are predicted to decline.

FreedomPay President, Chris Kronenthal, says: “This research is a clear indication that the world

of payments is changing rapidly, and the merchant needs to adapt to meet the needs of the evolving payment tech landscape.

“It’s no surprise that physical forms of payments such as cash and plastic will be surpassed by digital wallets in the years to come and it’s an imperative that businesses re-evaluate their commerce capabilities.”

Retail Economics Chief Executive, Richard Lim, adds: “Digital wallets are poised to become the primary mode of payments, eclipsing the use of physical cards and cash. Shoppers love the convenience they offer, helping to provide a more seamless journey that blends physical and digital together while incorporating the benefits of more personalised offers and loyalty schemes.

“While younger, more affluent shoppers have been at the forefront of this transformation, the industry must ensure that the benefits of digital wallets are accessible to all, irrespective of age or financial status. Fundamental to this is building trust in digital wallets and bridging knowledge gaps to avoid leaving vulnerable customers behind.”

Driving value added services for voice and mobile

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BILLING & PAYMENT

DCB in Europe << 3 about carrier billing. Many simply have no idea that their phone bill or phone credit can be used to pay for things.

Newsome-Davis believes that to compete with Apple Pay, Google Pay and even PayPal, DCB needs a strong and unified brand identity worldwide.

The example Newsome-Davis gives is how carrier billing has been promoted in Germany – something Martin Shurig, head of financial and enabling services at Telefonica Germany is quick to agree with.

“There has been national collaboration in Germany among the MNOs to create an identity for DCB and a standard explanation of how it works,” he says.

“Zahl einfach per Handyrechnung – or ‘Make easy payments via mobile phone bill’ – has been created along with a recognisable logo to place alongside other payment logos at the point of payment. There has also been a nationwide billboard campaign and a ‘buy one get one free’ offering on selected vending machines that offer DCB to get people using it.”

This model is working well in Germany and MNOs around the world are being encouraged to do similar programmes in their own markets, with a view to one day having a universal carrier billing brand.

“This is exactly what is needed,” says Corbett. “MNOs need to help push it and this sort of thing will really help achieve that.”

DIMOCO’s Pilcher agrees, seeing the branding as a key way to make it a trusted brand.

This approach is one that all operators need to adopt. For nigh-on 30 years carrier billing has been an also-ran. Now it has the chance to be a main player – it can now start to be used for all those 21st Century quasi-physical things such as parking, public transport ticketing, EV charging

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DCB + Messaging = Super apps?

What is more interesting is how it ties up with the other great theme of World Telemedia, messaging (see page 12). There has been a surge in SMS use for A2P and that looks like carrying over into greater use of RCS, WhatsApp, social media messaging and more. With corporates using these channels for customer service and marketing, there is increasing pressure to tie-in carrier billing to create that perfect mix of message and payments.

Add in how content providers are also looking at how to drive traffic and monetise their interactions and you have the makings of something really interesting.

Interestingly, at the Carrier Billing Summit in Amsterdam, Telefonica Germany suggested that the future of DCB may lie in opening up its APIs to

and car and bike short-term rental. With plans to possibly lift the €50 ceiling on payments when PSD3 comes into play, this market could explode (see page 6).

DCB WORLDWIDE

While carrier billing has seen some unexpected growth across the established European market, it has become the payment tool of choice elsewhere in the world.

Across Asia and in particular the Middle East and Africa, carrier billing has been embraced by SPs large and small.

Playing to it ubiquity in markets where hardly anyone has a bank account but does have a phone, streaming service, sports content

developers. This has the potential to really make this payment tech – and the messaging market – fly higher than ever. With all due respect to operators, they aren’t necessarily the ones with the big and out there ideas of how to create new services and applications. Developers, however, can – and given access to the tools that sit behind DCB, there could be some interesting new applications about to be sprung on the world.

I don’t want to bandy the idea of super-apps about too much, but the confluence of all these technologies has the makings of creating something along these lines for someone – something not wasted on both Viveri (see page 8) and Germany’s InternetQ (see page 10).

providers, gaming companies and even utilities have rapidly taken up carrier billing as the means to charge their new and exploding audiences in these regions for new content.

According to Riccardo Vallaro, Business Project Manager at Sam Media: “We have seen huge opportunity for growth as they are moving forward in terms of data connectivity and users want new experiences. And this is across markets from South Africa up to Morocco. Markets such as Ethiopia, for example, are opening up and a lot of change here leads to a lot of opportunity. From a content perspective, VAS and DCB is still leading the way, but many local

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

operators are opening up their networks and payments services to the likes of Netflix, so the market is moving forwards rapidly.”

Naji Bou Habib, founder & CEO of MT2, meanwhile, believes that while mass market content and VOD services, games and podcasts are doing great business (see page 19), there are challenges with acquisition and advertising costs, as well as taking payments – which is why DCB rules the roost.

“Credit card payments and wallets are very low in our region due to lack of regulations and low penetration of payment providers and wallet operators,” he says. “There are some moves to try using European and US players, but there are problems with these companies doing business with large numbers of users from outside of Europe. But there are some trials of this going on.”

What this means for MENA is that local telcos that offer DCB have the upper hand as DCB is the only payment tool that works for the mass market – even Google uses DCB in MENA. “It is going to be hard to get MNOs to let go their grip,” says Habib. “And this means pay-outs remain low. But it is something we are working on through organisations such as Mobile Ecosystem Forum and others to bring about change.”

BILLING & PAYMENT

PSD3 What do you need to be prepared for?

With a draft of third EU Payments Service Directive (PSD3) poised to be unveiled in 2024, what can we expect and what could it mean for carrier billing and other payment mechanism? Paul Skeldon reports The EU is poised to publish a draft of its next Payments Service Directive (PSD3) in 2024, with EU members then given some 18 months to veto and amend.

So, while it may be 2026 before it comes into force, it is already causing a stir in the payment industry.

WHAT IS IN IT?

Firstly, what is the PSD3 going to give the world? In short, no one really knows the detail, but broad brush strokes reveal that it will, according to fintech company TrueLayer, cover: • The move from a Directive to a Regulation: standardising payments across the EU • Better APIs: better open banking services • More streamlined authentication: less pain at the checkout • Direct access to payment systems for fintechs: a boost for innovation • IBAN and name matching: a risk-based approach to fraud prevention • Merging E-money and pay-

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ments institutions: simplifying licensing • Re-authorisation for firms under PSD3 For the fintech market and the banks, attention has been broadly focussed on redressing the unbalance introduced in PSD2, whereby banks had to share their data and access to their systems with non-banking fintechs under the auspices of creating more open banking.

Now, in the interests of data enrichment, banks want the favour returned. Whether this will happen or not remains to be seen, but if it does it could lead to not only better services from banks, but also could create even more competition and efficiency in the open banking sector.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR TELEMEDIA?

This is good and bad news for telemedia. For the VAS community, increasingly competitive payments and a broader range of payment tools could be a boon.

The more choice consumers have as to how to pay largely means more of them part with their cash. If PSD3 does anything specific for microbilling and brings in greater antifraud protection then there are even more benefits for the VAS market.

However, more competition in payments will add pressure to DCB, with customers and merchants maybe being offered more tempting offerings. Conversely, this growing competition in payments could see DCB – via MNOs – raise its game to become a much more cost-effective and widely used tool.

There are rife rumours too that PSD3 could do away with the €50 limit to carrier billing and

other exemptions seen across this particularly payment tool. On the face of it, lifting the exemptions could prove problematic for carrier billing services. However, all it takes is for there to be a shift among MNOs to become payment agents and suddenly DCB could be pitted again all other digital payment tools and could be used to pay for anything – large, small, digital and physical.

There are already rumblings of this happening in Germany, where DCB provider InternetQ is regulated as a payment institution (see page 10). This may yet usher in the era of carrier biling becoming a mainstream, multi-purpise payment tool if the operators play ball.

What about post-Brexit Britain?

PSD3 is a purely European Union initiative. It seeks to improve and modernise payments in Europe, harmonising and extending. That, of course, no longer applies to the UK. However, it is widely understood that the UK will seek to ape the key elements of PSD3 into its own payment regulations. In fact, it is thought that the country may take the ideas mooted in PSD3 and expand on them.

There is form for this. Under PSD2 – negotiated when the UK was still in the EU – the UK not only signed up, but took the open banking portions of the legislation and boosted them, creating an open banking model in the UK that goes far beyond that of Europe.

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

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BILLING & PAYMENT

Engagement party Combining the convenience of DCB with interaction services is a powerful draw for media companies, charities and other businesses. And, as Paul Skeldon reports, that has prompted the launch of a very special telemedia player Part of the power of carrier billing is how it can deliver rapid payments. Where some baulk at the revenue share not being on a par with credit card (yet), for many businesses its convenience makes it worth the cost.

This convenience, as we have seen, makes carrier billing an ideal on-boarding tool for all sorts of services and combining that with the power of interaction with content, services and businesses is a no brainer.

For years, DCB has underpinned how competitions are monetised – but what if the sort of engagement that these traditional services have created could be monetised to an even greater extent?

This is something that media groups, charities and other businesses are in sore need of exploiting. Many run some form of engagement and many do monetise it, but not as fully – nor with as much up- and cross-selling – as they could.

Btu what if that could change?

In a world where interaction is paramount and monetisation a necessary credo, offering billable interactions is a must.

That is the thinking behind Viveri Group, which is aiming to help businesses of all kinds maximise audience engagement and monetisation like never before. According to the company’s branding, it aims to bring together crypto, open banking, DCB and customer engagement to offer automated, multi-channel engagement across all digital channels for all sorts of businesses.

The building blocks of Viveri lie in payment tech provider Dynamic Mobile Billing (DMB) and engagement business

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Spoke. Spoke has all the engagement nous – working with the likes of the DEC, BBC, Reach Plc and events, which include the Eurovision Song Contest and ITV’s Soccer Aid for UNICEF – while DMB is an international payments business handling more than 500 million transactions a year across 12 territories.

Together, these two companies can offer a level of monetisable interactions not yet seen in the media, charity and entertainment sectors.

MATCH MADE IN INTERACTIVE HEAVEN

The pairing of DMB and Spoke is something of a match made in heaven. DMB’s billing platform and reach is ideal for these sorts of services, but it lacks the interactivity play. Spoke, on the other hand, already works with all the main media companies, charities and events, but has not had the payment part. Together, these two companies can deliver an impressive and easy way for media companies to jump to the next

level of monetisable interaction.

“It’s very much what the media market wants and needs,” says Gary Corbett, chairman of DMB and Viveri’s major shareholder.

“They need to go further than just competitions, they have all that content to monetise, which they can do through interaction. They can up- and cross-sell and expand their revenue and capabilities.”

The move also helps expand the reach of carrier billing, believes Corbett. “It allows media companies and charities that are already using DCB to expand how they use it and what they use it for,” he says.

TELEMEDIA 2.0?

The move exemplifies the wider trend seen in the telemedia sector for consolidation. Telemedia Magazine has for several years now espoused the aggregation of services to better serve businesses and consumers. As technologies such as customer engagement and interaction have

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

improved and expanded across verticals, the need to offer a more cohesive set of services has grown.

We have already witnessed this in the messaging and engagement market around customer service, with many messaging providers becoming cloud based CPaaS platforms (see page 12).

The same is now happening with the integration of billing and payments with engagement strategies. Expect to see more of this sort of thing, particularly the integration of DCB and messaging, along with adding new payment tools such as open banking and crypto into the mix – just as Viveri is doing and it ushers in the era of Telemedia 2.0.

“The formation of Viveri also means that DMB can also now offer media companies and charities a wide range of payments, including those based on open banking and cryptocurrency too,” says Corbett. www.viveri.com

BILLING & PAYMENT

Licensed to thrill

As a mark of just how far DCB has come in Germany, one company has been granted a payment institution licence that will allow it to charge for physical goods – and change the whole relationship between MNOs and PSPs. Paul Skeldon reports If anyone was looking for proof that carrier billing in Europe has become a mainstream payment mechanism need look no further than Germany. Here, mobile payment and performance marketing provider InternetQ is one of the first German providers of carrier billing solutions to receive permission from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) to provide payment services, as a regulated payment institution.

This is indeed big news. With such a licence, InternetQ – which operates DCB services under the Kanzaroo brand in 32 languages

around the world – can start to offer carrier billing as a payment method for a range of things outside the usual remit for DCB. This is being touted as DCB making its way into being used to pay for physical goods – and that certainly is on the cards – but more it makes DCB a much more desirable payment tool all round and opens up a range of new sectors to using the technology.

According to Marco Priewe, Managing Director of InternetQ, carrier billing is already attracting a lot of attention among a range of merchants because it has such a high conversion rate. “It may

be seen as expensive compared to other payment tools such as credit card, but it delivers way more users – not least those that may not be able to pay in any other way. This makes it a very useful tool and worth the extra cost,” he says.

Priewe also points out how this high conversion rate combines with near ubiquity – “everyone has a mobile phone, right?” he says – makes it an ideal onboarding tool for all sorts of services.

With these factors making DCB increasingly attractive to a range of merchants, Priewe believes that the time is now ripe to look to broaden DCB’s appeal.

“MNOs are increasingly backing DCB – in Germany they have got together to give it a brand name and are actively pushing it to consumers and merchants and many are much more open to negotiating better revenue shares if the volume is there. Getting this licence positions us to take full advantage of this.”

MEANING OF THE LICENCE

The granting of licence allows InternetQ to offer DCB in a range of new ways, taking it outside the exemptions around DCB laid down in the PSD2 regulations.

This means that the company can run DCB for payments of more than €50 and, as said, can now offer carrier billing as a payment tool for physical goods.

This has been the Holy Grail for many payment providers offering DCB. It broadens the scope for where DCB can be applied and puts it in front of more consumers and, perhaps more importantly, more merchants.

However, no one will be using carrier billing anytime soon to buy

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More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

their groceries. Rather, it is going to find its way rapidly into the burgeoning world of quasi-physical goods – goods that aren’t digital, but which equally aren’t as tangible as, say, buying a pineapple.

According to Priewe this is likely to initially encompass things like paying for EV charging, transportation, bike hire and so on.

All these things are already being done in various markets with DCB, but the licencing of it means that it can be for more than €50 – which covers a whole range of longer transportation purchases and, as energy prices rise, makes paying for electricity to charge your car more realistic.

“It means that we can focus on new verticals outside of those such as adult, dating and gaming that we already major in,” says Priewe. “Instead, we can start to look at EV charging, ride sharing, short, medium and long-distance public transport and so on.”

But where Priewe sees a likely immediate benefit is in iGaming and sports betting. “The iGaming market has been legalised early in the UK, but just a year ago in Germany. It is a massive market with huge potential and the UK has proven already that DCB is a successful payment method for iGaming content. In Germany only operators that are white listed by the Joint Gaming Authority of the federal states (GGL) will be able to implement DCB.”

CHANGES FOR MNOS

While becoming a licenced payment provider may open up the potential for DCB to be used in many more applications, it does require some changes from the MNOs – changes that may yet prove problematic.

“To make this happen, we will need a different contract with the MNOs,” says Priewe. “MNOs will need to be agents of the payment institution so will themselves have to apply to BaFin to change how they are licenced.

MNOs will have to prove that they can be payments agents.”

This seems, on the face of it, to be a near impossible task.

Persuading the powers that be within MNOs that they need to go through a new regulatory approvals process is daunting.

The champions of DCB within the MNOs will have to first persuade their bosses and their bosses’ bosses that this is a good idea. Then, even if they achieve that, it will have to go through the lengthy process of being approved. And, as we all know, MNOs aren’t renowned for their speed at getting things done.

Priewe, however, is optimistic.

“At the Global Carrier Billing Sum-

mit in Amsterdam in September, MNOs were queuing up to say how this agent model is their direction of travel. There is also the fact that doing this could DCB expand its reach hugely, making a lot of money for MNOs. Thirdly, there are rumours that PSD3 (see page 6) may yet scrap the DCB exemptions, which could force MNOs who want to sell DCB to have to go down the agent route anyway.”

Priewe’s optimism may well be prescient. The move by the operators in Germany to create a brand around DCB certainly shows that they are taking DCB much more seriously.

“They certainly have an interest in [becoming agents] so it may only take a few months to make this happen,” he says optimistically. www.kanzaroo.com de@internet.com

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Driving value added services for voice and mobile

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MESSAGING & ENGAGEMENT

SMS King or knave?

SMS dominates the messaging world: it is ubiquitous, convenient and cheap. But it does face challenges, not least fraud, which are holding it back from its true potential. Paul Skeldon finds that, with SMS, we ain’t seen nothing yet Connecting consumer with content, along with providing businesses with ways to reach out to consumers, has become big business. And there has certainly been a blurring of the lines between ‘business messaging’, marketing and consumer messaging – a blurring that has seen messaging start to become a vital bridge between content consumption and payments (see page 8).

According to HORISEN’s CEO Fabrizio Salanitri, SMS still dominates the business messaging market, but it is increasingly becoming fragmented as services such as RCS, WhatsApp, Telegram and social media messaging start to becoming preferred channels for consumers to interact with businesses.

But with everyone using it, it

is very hard to standout, he says.

“Making sure that SMS support offers all the features and services that businesses need for both A2P and P2A messaging with SMS is the most important thing.

Reliability and feature-richness are what will attract users.”

Salanitri also emphasises that modernisation and scalability are also key. “A lot of platforms are 10 to 15 years old making them difficult to scale,” he says. “And scalability is key, because the two way messaging we now see with AI driven dialogue will generate so much more traffic that the platform’s has to be ready to swallow and to be able to process reliably without downtime. It also needs to be able to connect thousands of customers and suppliers.

So, from an engineering point of view, this is no piece of cake.”

He continues: “Then, if we talk about the basic technology, what is very important is that this platform has to be driven by someone; it needs a pilot and the pilot needs a cockpit. The user which works with this platform needs a user interface that makes even complicated processes look easy. This is something we see as fundamental and where we at HORISEN put a lot of effort to make things look easy for our customers optimise a lot of processes, so that they can focus really on the important stuff.”

CHALLENGES FOR SMS

But SMS has its challenges. More than 3 trillion A2P SMS messages were delivered globally in 2022, averaging a staggering 8.2 billion messages daily. Despite such robust numbers, many mobile operators are yet to implement optimal pricing strategies that

An innovative solution to SMS pumping?

In the digital age where SMS communication is paramount for businesses worldwide, the rise of bots inflating SMS traffic and creating fake accounts has become a rising concern. To solve this issue, global cloud communications platform Infobip has introduced “Signals,” an innovative solution designed to combat the problems caused

by SMS pumping.

“Infobip Signals” employs machine learning to automatically detect and block fraudulent traffic without any interventions from the business. This tool is vital for brands that want to protect their financial resources and maintain a genuine user base by preventing fake accounts that can harm their value.

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“In an ecosystem where every active user counts, and brand integrity is a priority, Infobip Signals is our answer to ensuring businesses can thrive without the burden of SMS fraud. This is not just about financial security; it’s about upholding the genuine value of every brand, “says Adrian Benic, Chief Product Officer at Infobip.

Available for global adoption now, Infobip Signals underlines Infobip’s commitment to providing innovative solutions for modern communication challenges. All businesses employing SMS in their operations can now shield themselves from potential financial setbacks and reputational damage by including Infobip Signals in their security framework.

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

would maximise revenue from this burgeoning business messaging traffic.

While SMS remains a dominant force in the A2P messaging traffic landscape, its market share is projected to decline over the coming years. It underscores the urgency for mobile operators to reassess and recalibrate their pricing strategies to drive positive top line impact, ensuring the long-term sustainability of their A2P SMS business.

According to data from Juniper Research, the wholesale pricing for A2P SMS remains unpredictable with disparities across key regions and the evolving A2P landscape requires dynamic pricing strategies that align with regional benchmarks and discern between national and international services. The ability to identify SMS use cases, such as OTPs, notifications, and marketing, can aid in more consistent and accurate pricing, finds the study.

“One of the prime challenges that the industry faces is the unpredictable nature of wholesale SMS pricing. This unpredictability is not just a global phenomenon but also a regional one, with stark variations in average pricing across different areas. Therefore, mobile operators need to be agile, employing strategic pricing models that resonate with the market’s needs and drive sustainable growth,” says Ehsan Ahmadi, CEO & Founder of VOX Solutions.

Adding to this, Sam Barker, VP of Telecoms Market Research from Juniper Research says: “The intricate web of A2P SMS pricing is a reflection of the diverse strategies employed by operators. But, as the market dynamics shift, it’s imperative to revisit, realign, and recalibrate pricing structures to remain competitive and relevant.”

Juniper Research emphasises the need for mobile operators to re-evaluate, innovate, and adapt in these dynamic times to ensure they capitalise on the immense

potential that the A2P SMS market offers.

SMS AND FRAUD

SMS has another, even bigger challenge, which also plays into edging out its hegemony. Rapidly rising business SMS prices and increasing levels of messaging fraud such as AIT and pumping tactics could see SMS authentication traffic grow by a mere 4% in 2024, hammering a much-needed revenue stream for operators.

According to separate data from Juniper Research, the sector has seen consistent 10% growth year-on-year over the past five years and many MNOs have put faith in business SMS from A2P being a lively revenue stream.

However, the rise of AIT (Artificially Inflated Traffic), where enterprises pay for SMS authentication traffic for users that do not exist, will be a key driver of rising SMS prices. This is leading

enterprises to explore alternative authentication technologies, such as one-time passwords over OTT messaging apps and flash calling.

According to the study, more than 50% of SMS traffic will be attributable to authentication use cases in 2024.

To combat slowing SMS traffic growth, operators must promote authentication APIs such as Number Verify and SilentAuth, to keep demand for authentication services within operator-controlled environments.

If operators are unable to reduce prices and fraud on their messaging networks, they risk losing vital authentication traffic and revenue to other channels.

The GSMA Open Gateway, launched in 2023, will enable operators to swiftly develop and deploy API-based authentication solutions, eliminating the need for user authentication, silently authenticating at the SIM-level

instead. This will provide a frictionless experience for mobile users whilst retaining the use of telecoms networks.

Research author Rosie O’Connor explains: “With high prices and unreliable SMS termination, enterprises are beginning to lose faith in SMS authentication. Operator APIs offer an opportunity for operators to ensure that authentication remains on operator networks.”

SMS HAS YET TO HIT ITS FULL POTENTIAL

While current SMS growth may be slowing and the channel is impacted by fraud and other issues, all business messaging is still way off achieving its full potential. Mobilesquared’s Nick Lane points out that globally there are 5.63 billion unique SMS users, however by the end of 2023, 81% will also be using rich messaging of some kind, with around 3 bil-

lion on WhatsApp. According to Lane, only a tiny fraction of global businesses are using messaging of any kind vicas part of their marketing strategy.

Currently it is seen as a customer care tool, however leveraging its reach for marketing could see the level of messaging go stratospheric in the coming years – something that will see MNOs sit up and take note of just how powerful, and lucrative, messaging can be for them if they start to treat it as more than just an addendum to their voice and data businesses.

With Google having a significant presence at the show promoting their (non-messaging) advertising, it is clear that marketing and telemedia are set to collide in the coming 24 months to offer some truly powerful options. Who knows, it may even see Google’s RCS messaging take off.

Driving value added services for voice and mobile

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MESSAGING & ENGAGEMENT

OTT starts to pay its way OTT messaging may not have the reach of SMS – yet – but it is starting to attract users. Paul Skeldon takes a look at how it works in practice and finds out how Tata AIA Life Insurance has put it to use OTT messaging is becoming increasingly important to users and getting the balance right between messaging types on offer is a key driver for the telemedia industry. While much is predicated on SMS, services and payments also need to work with OTT messaging.

Juniper Research predicts that operators are set to lose as much as $3bn from their SMS revenues to OTT in the next five years as SMS quality is eroded

by AIT and pumping.

While there are a wealth of messaging channels out there, the one that could eat into SMS’s dominance is WhatsApp. While it may have 3 billion active users globally, it lies way behind the usage levels of SMS – which is pretty much ubiquitous worldwide thanks to anyone having a mobile being able to use it.

What is for sure, however, is that WhatsApp is having a moment. WhatsApp Business Messaging is starting to garner

some real traction and many businesses are starting to reach out to messaging providers to start using it.

Infobip, for example, has recently started enabling businesses to design and implement end-to-end customer purchase journeys within WhatsApp. Using the latest features in the WhatsApp Business Platform, businesses can build pathways for customers to complete tasks and make purchases without leaving the app, improving the experience, and increasing conversions.

Before, businesses using WhatsApp had to redirect customers outside the app to external websites, support services or payment gateways to find information, contact agents, and make purchases.

Fragmented customer journeys add friction, create inconsistent experiences, and increase cart abandonment.

With WhatsApp Flows and Payments, businesses can

create flexible, customised, and streamlined end-to-end purchase journeys where customers can make bookings or complete purchases all within a WhatsApp chat thread. By doing so, brands improve customer satisfaction and experience, while increasing retention, and conversions. Use cases include lead generation, recommending products, booking appointments, managing orders, and in-thread payments.

How it works in practice Atul Malhotra, Vice President of Digital Servicing and Service to Sales at Tata AIA Life Insurance, explains how the WhatsApp Business Messaging tool works for him.

“With time now being measured in a jiffy, and convenience being the most important parameter across all digital platforms, Payments on WhatsApp, with minimal processing steps, and upfront confirmation of policy payments, was much needed to boost consumer confidence and satisfaction.

“Prior to the Payment on WhatsApp service, consumers would need to go through several steps including, log in to a mobile app, authentication process, and payment gateway processing, while with payments on What-

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sApp, these steps are eliminated. In the first three months of the launch of this service, approximately 3000 customers successfully paid around Rs40 million for renewal.

“Our tech partner Infobip provided incredible support in integrating payments on WhatsApp Pay into the TATA AIA Life Insurance payment system. It’s been a resounding success, and our consumers couldn’t be any happier. Team dedication and expertise made this integration a breeze.

“The impact on our operations and customer satisfaction has been remarkable – the convenience and security of payments on WhatsApp have won over our customers, leading to increased sales and loyalty.”

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

This is part of OTT’s wider strategy, enabling businesses to seamlessly build end-to-end conversational customer journeys with the full support of our professional services, which include building data flows, developing and creating custom use cases and monitoring.

It follows Infobip’s launch of click-to-chat advanced analytics last month, which combines ads from Facebook or Instagram with WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram direct messaging to increase conversions and return on ad spend.

Ben Lewis, Vice President of Marketing & Growth at Infobip, says: “Customers want richer, more conversational experiences with a business or brand on the channels they use with their family and friends. By removing the need to jump between different apps and websites, one-to-one purchase journeys in the WhatsApp Business Platform help create value for businesses and their customers.” www.infobip.com info@infobip.com

FROM THE EDITOR

THE BIG GUY Paul Skeldon paul@telemedia-news.com ART DIRECTOR Victoria Wren victoria@wr3n.com CONTRIBUTORS & CONSULTANTS Nick Lane Elson Sutanto Jarvis Todd Tim Green SALES & MARKETING info@Telemedia-news.com PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Annika Micheli annika@Telemedia-news.com PUBLISHER Jarvis Todd jarvis@Telemedia-news.com TO SUBSCRIBE www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk CIRCULATION ENQUIRIES Geraldine Lawton - O’Sullivan Geraldine@Telemedia-news.com WHAT WE’VE BEEN LISTENING TO Green Tambourine, The Lemon Pipers Drinking Every Day, Rumkicks WHAT WE HAVE BEEN READING The Satsuma Complex, Bob Mortimer WHAT WE HAVE BEEN AMUSED BY Bob Mortimer WHO WE’VE BEEN FOLLOWING @RealBobMortimer WINTER 2023 WILL BRING… Convergence of telemedia services TELEMEDIA MAGAZINE is published five times a year and circulated in print to qualified readers and downloaded in digital format to 12,000+ requested readers.

BUSINESS ADDRESS: Ground Floor, Virginia Cottage, Nash Lane, Scaynes Hill, West Sussex, RH17 7NJ, UK. Web: www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk Overseas subscriptions and non qualified readers can obtain Telemedia Magazine with an annual subscription rate of £15 / 20. Refunds on cancelled subscriptions will be provided at the publisher’s discretion, unless specifically guaranteed within the term of subscription. © World Telemedia Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of Telemedia Magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording on any information storage or retrieval system without the written consent of the publisher. The contents of Telemedia Magazine are subject to reproduction in information storage and retrieval systems.

Print by Borpi, S.L. (Borpisa).

Pity the fool that underestimates telemedia To paraphrase Hannibal Smith in The A Team, I love it when a plan comes together. As World Telemedia Marbella revealed – and how this issue of Telemedia magazine attests – messaging, content and payments are all now forming one offering.

If proof were needed, turn to page 8 of this magazine to see how Dynamic Mobile Billing and engagement company Spoke are working under the name Viveri to create an engagement and payment powerhouse to offer media companies, charities and anyone else who may be interested the ability to engage, sell and monetise pretty much anything.

This chimes with recent changes across Europe as to how DCB is being used, with many mainstream businesses

starting to see it as a viable way to on-board users to a range of services (see pages 1-4). In Germany in particular, the MNOs have got together to give carrier billing its own brand name and logo, while German payment platform InternetQ has now garnered a licence from the German regulator to use DCB to sell physical and quasi-physical goods (see page 10).

The importance of DCB and content and VAS all working together is further showcased by the shifting demand for highquality content subscriptions seen across the market (see page 16), which finds that not only are consumers demanding a much higher volume of much higher quality content (see page 18), but also that DCB is proving to be the most convenient way

for them to pay for it – across Europe and in MENA and beyond (see page 19).

SMS continues to shape how many consumers engage with brands and merchants (see page 12). But with the likes of WhatsApp growing its reach into this market (see page 14), it won’t be long before we see all messaging types playing a pivotal part in generating content use and offering payments from message.

With issues around scams and fraud being addressed across the world (see pages 22- 26) telemedia is definitely set to see some action and adventure in 2024. telemediaonline.co.uk @telemediaTweets Paul Skeldon. editor

Driving value added services for voice and mobile

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Sticky and sweet VALUE-ADDED SERVICES

VAS content is the life blood of the telemedia market and it has become a fiercely competitive business. Here Paul Skeldon takes a look at how the trend for sticky content is helping find its sweet spot Despite the Russian-Ukraine war dampening economic spirits in the post-Covid world, the rise of value-added services (VAS) and content seen during the pandemic shows no signs of abating.

All those consumers that were forced to seek entertainment, company and solace during successive global lockdowns seem to now be wedded to this way of life. In fact, globally the reliance on mobile for entertainment has grown since the pandemic as those in markets across the world look to live digitally.

To this end the VAS content market is on a roll. Data from The Business Research Company shows that the global mobile VAS market will grow from a staggering $796.04bn in 2022 to

$894.84bn this year – a CAGR of 12.4% – and is set to accelerate to $1459.09bn by 2027.

This growth is driven by the rising number of smartphone users worldwide, both in developed and developing markets. This has spurred ever-greater numbers of consumers to get online and, more importantly, to embrace digital content consumption and ecommerce. Not only are they all online, but they are also more than willing to pay for things out there on the web.

VIDEO WINNERS

Video content leads the pack, with streaming services having inculcated a hunger in all populations in all regions and of all ages for visual content. While the likes

UGC having a moment

Already the power behind the rise of social media, user generated content (UGC) – content created by users themselves – is starting to not only drive the rise of short-form content on sites such as SnapChat and TikTok, but has also become a major traffic source on YouTube. In fact, YouTube, fearing it was likely to lose traffic to this shortform video-driven social sites, launched YouTube Shorts to tap into this market.

However, UGC is starting to find its way into all manner of other online offerings. It is already playing a growing role in ecommerce, with product reviews, unboxings and other related experiences making it into the reviews sections of many websites.

Polls, quizzes and AR filters are also all starting to see many younger users creating inventive and

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of Netflix and Prime offer long form content, it is the smaller, snackable stuff that has the mass market appeal.

It comes as no surprise that, with an impressive 1.97 billion unique visits each month dwelling for an average of 20 minutes and 22 seconds per visit, video sharing giant YouTube is the most popular website in the world according to Productivity Spot. From a traffic perspective, YouTube was second only to Google, which came out on top with a score of 72.75 out of 100. Google has a staggering 3.19 billion unique users per month. However, each user spends ‘just’ 10 minutes 37 seconds on the search engine per visit.

YouTube, on the other hand, was revealed as the website that people spend the most time on, with an index score of 65.56 out of 100. It clocked a staggering 33.57 billion visits per month,

new ways to promote themselves, the brands they love (and those they hate) and to create interesting entertainment across a range of platforms.

UGC is very powerful. In the age of cynicism, it looks more genuine and this in itself makes the content very sticky and interesting.

This has led to a raft of micro-influencers arriving online, which in turn reshapes the kinds of content that users want to watch. This trend is one that is going to see content shift in 2024 towards even more short-form offerings, but more with much of it offering UGC-like influence.

It is also leading to the use of branded hashtags and UGC based ad campaigns that use UGC to drive engagement and brand awareness to new heights. Expect to see more of this in 2024 and beyond.

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

making it the second most visited website in the world behind Google.

Jim Markus, Director at Productivity Spot comments on the study: “Looking at how long users spend on a website is a useful metric for gauging how engaging it is, but it doesn’t tell you the full story if the site doesn’t receive a lot of visitors. We felt it prudent to consider other factors within our index, such as monthly web traffic and bounce rate, to ensure that the findings were more representative of the sites we spend the most time on.

“YouTube seems to have captured our attention the most, with the average user spending more than 20 minutes watching content and browsing the platform each time they visit. The average duration of a YouTube video is estimated to be 4 minutes 24 seconds, meaning that each user is watching 4.6 videos on average per desktop visit.

QUALITY AND STICKINESS

This embrace of video content – both short and long-form – is now the basis of the telemedia VAS content market, with all the tropes of sports highlights, health and wellbeing, self-improvement and entertainment all still very much in demand. However, there is a shift in what content is increasingly being purchased to by VAS providers and those looking to monetise traffic. Today, its not necessarily about length, but more about quality and that elusive quality ‘stickiness’.

According to Seriously Fresh Media’s Julia Di Mambro, video is definitely the most popular form of content today worldwide, but the quality of that content is now paramount.

“All our clients want content that will extend the lifespan of users of their propositions. What we are seeing in particular are newsfeeds from RSS across multiple verticals,” she says. “Celebrity, entertainment, fashion, tech and actual news are especially popu-

lar and this content is very cheap and cost effective to produce and regularly update.”

This need to update regularly has become one of the main factors around making content engaging and services sticky and is, as Di Mambro says, “makes it the perfect product for the market at the moment.”

Interestingly, with YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok capturing huge swathes of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha markets globally with short form content, the services that companies such as Seriously Fresh sell is spread over short and long-form content.

“It’s a 50:50 split between long and short form content right now, with our clients requesting not only news feeds, but also documentaries and movies. The thing they all have in common is that they want very high-quality content of all lengths.”

Cookies Digital’s Valentina

Tranquilli agrees. “Quality content is essential and it needs to be updated regularly and length really does depend on what the content is covering.”

Cookies specialises in esports and gaming content (see page 18) and so features a lot of short form news and behind the scenes material, as well as really long form content when covering an entire eSports tournament.

NAME OF THE ENGAGEMENT GAME

The name of the game in VAS is engagement and to deliver that, content has to be rich, high-quality, constantly up-dated and easy to access. “Video continues to stand out as the way to do this,” stresses Di Mambro. “It is the most powerful form of content right now and what users want to pay for. Carrier billing is also making it easy to access it and pay for it on the fly.”

Content in tune with the Metaverse

The Metaverse may yet to prove itself to be the next iteration of the internet, but already companies are starting to explore how to create value added services (VAS) in this new realm.

Chief among them is Sam Media, which has not only launched its Holozonia metaverse platform, but has also developed an immersive, virtual reality karaoke platform to bring this evergreen form of entertainment up to date.

SingSpace by Stingray Karaoke is a global karaoke metaverse designed to cater to the musical tastes of users worldwide.

Featuring a vast musical library of more than 100,000 songs, the service offers access to a range of public and private rooms, where users can sing solo or do duets, an arena that promises a stadiumlike experience for singers, along with social tools to encourage the creation of user-generated content (UGC) to create a vibrant and 24-hour party experience. Users can also record and share their performances and the whole site is AI moderated to keep people on the right side of decent.

Commenting on the service, Sam Media says: “Whether you’re a solo crooner, a duet enthusiast, or someone who revels in lively karaoke parties, SingSpace by Stingray Karaoke offers an unparalleled platform to let your inner star shine. You can access SingSpace by Stingray Karaoke from your smartphone, computer, or VR headset, making it convenient for users to enjoy their favourite tunes anywhere, anytime.”

Gaming & Esports content on mobile

Driving value added services for voice and mobile

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MEDIA & CONTENT

eSports

Playing to win?

One of the stand-out content ver ticals that is garnering massive attention – from consumers as well as from the telemedia sector – is gaming, especially espor ts. Paul Skeldon repor ts Gaming has become a massive chunk of the broader entertainment market and it has also become a lucrative vertical for the telemedia sector. Now, the combination of gaming and watching gaming – the vertical known as eSports – is set to be even more pivotal to the sector.

According to Statista, the eSports market worldwide is projected to reach a revenue of $3.8bn in 2023. This is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 9.54%, resulting in a projected market volume of $5.4bn by 2027.

The US generates the most revenue in the eSports market, with a projected market volume of US$871m in 2023.

In terms of user base, the eSports market is expected to have a total of 865.2 million users by 2027. This user penetration rate is projected to be 11.4% in 2023 and is expected to increase to 13.9% by 2027.

The rise of competitive gaming in South Korea has solidified the country as a global powerhouse in the eSports market.

Telemedia company Cookies Digital has been quick to recognise this surge in interest in eSports as it taps into the growing need for entertainment and high quality, high-turnover content.

“It is a rich mix of long and short-form content, tailored to local markets,” says Valentina Tranquilli, founder of Cookies Digital.

“The content has to be localised, but so too does the market-

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ing. We use local influencers to promote our content – whether the content is local or not – with a lot of local UGC being created to push the services.”

YOU BETTER, YOU BET

While there is a huge appetite for eSports content, the largest market segment in eSports market is eSports Betting, with a market volume of $2.1bn in 2023, believes Statista.

This growth area is not only a

boon content markets, but it also could prove pivotal for carrier billing. Currently, many of the markets where eSports is most popular rely on carrier billing for payments to watch and engage with the content. However, carrier billing is also likely to be the most effective way to onboard those that want to bet on eSports.

As it constitutes betting on the outcome of an event, it relies on bookmakers to run the bets and many of these firms are already using DCB to on-board users. The expansion into eSports betting – especially in markets underserved by credit card – could well see an explosion in use of this payment tool, as well as the rise of eSports content.

Consumer appetite for cloud gaming represents a major opportunity for… Netflix?

There is a growing interest in cloud gaming worldwide and, while Microsoft is making a big play for it, it could be Netflix that reaps the rewards.

Research from Savanta reveals one third (33%) of committed gamers across seven global markets have already used a cloud gaming service, alongside 10% of casual gamers. 82% of those who have tried cloud gaming are likely to use it again and the current uptake of cloud gaming services is highest in Spain (35%) and the USA (32%), and lowest in France (16%).

While nearly 44% of ‘non-passionate’ gamers and 26% of passionate gamers weren’t aware of cloud gaming prior to taking the survey, the concept is appealing. Of those yet to try it, Spanish gamers are most open to doing so (44%), followed by the USA (36%) and the UK (30%).

Shaun Austin, senior vice president media at Savanta, says: “Committed gamers, the audience Microsoft is targeting with its mooted $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard. However, 70% of our sample play mainly on their smartphone and over half (52%) prefer freemium games. The po-

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

tential in this segment has certainly not been lost on Netflix. It has recently announced it is extending its offer from downloadable mobile games to a fully-fledged cloud gaming service, which will be accessible through connected TVs and laptops.”

Netflix soft-launched gaming downloads through its mobile app in November 2021. A fifth (22%) of Savanta’s sample have already downloaded at least one game, and the majority (77%) would likely do so again. Nearly half (45%) of those who had not previously heard about Netflix games would use the current service.

Austin concludes: “Games represent sticky content for a platform likely to be hit hard both by the cost-of-living-crisis and the Writers’ Strike.

Moreover, Netflix’s IP in the gaming space could offer a host of brand extension opportunities, including product placement, for brand advertisers. Customers don’t need to give anything up, rather they have all to gain. If 45% of Netflix’s global audience of 238 million gives gaming a go, then Netflix could become a major force in cloud gaming space.”

MEDIA & CONTENT

The content king of MENA The MENA region is booming with spor ts and gaming content, but as Paul Skeldon finds out, success in this booming market comes with caveats The MENA market is a hotbed of telemedia services right now.

Having embraced smartphones and digital content services with alacrity in the past decade, the region is where the most rapid growth is happening and where some of the biggest opportunities lie.

Podcasts, games and video services are, as they are everywhere, extremely popular, while sports content – both domestically in the markets within MENA and international sport content – is becoming very popular.

The user base is certainly

there, but there are challenges.

Naji Bou Habib, founder & CEO of MT2, meanwhile, believes that while mass market content and VOD services, games and podcasts are doing great business, there are challenges with acquisition and advertising costs, as well as taking payments.

“Business is posting growth in the Middle East, however there are some threats to the market,” he says. “The market is being driven by new content services and we can also say that we are on an ‘up wave’ with carrier and regulators much more interest-

ed. There are codes of conduct and rules that drive the market.

But there are challenges.

“Our region is very juicy and competition is very high, which reduces margins and pushes up acquisition and advertising costs. Operators want to aggregate the market, appointing just one or two aggregators that MNOs want to deal with.

But this can bring in a conflict of interest and can impact companies that want to make their own content and push that.”

“There are also issues with how data is managed and used by many operators. Some markets are kind of private hunting areas that are very hard to enter for political reasons.,” he adds. “This isn’t just a problem

in MENA, this is a problem everywhere in the developing markets, where there are lack of laws protecting copyright and business ownership.”

Samuel Chiwanda from Malawi’s Click Mobile agrees. He says that while the market is starting to boom, issues with operators, regulation and in particular revenue shares in carrier billing, are all making growth across Africa more tentative.

“It is a strong market, but it is a new market and MNOs, regulators, government and the banking sector don’t make it easy to operate,” he warns.

“The consumer base may not be ‘developing’, but the market itself certainly is.”

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Driving value added services for voice and mobile

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MEDIA & CONTENT

Harnessing the power of the CDN Sebastian Spies takes a look at how more and more businesses are looking to run their own content deliver y networks (CDNs) and what that means for telemedia Companies today are operating in a distributed world where it has become necessary to deliver content as close to the user as possible. This ensures excellent quality of service, leading to improved user engagement and lower customer churn. For many, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) have become the delivery mechanism of choice and where once a CDN, or multi-CDN, setup was the preserve of video content companies streaming live video or on-demand media, this has now broadened out to include new use cases and a range of industries.

In the world of ecommerce, for example, success is measured by the speed, stability, and responsiveness of a retailer’s online platform. Customers are intolerant of even the smallest disruption in service, quickly abandoning the site and moving to a competitor who can instantly meet their needs. Loyalty is hard-won and easily lost. Which is why global eCommerce companies are turning to CDNs. Generally, a CDN will accelerate websites and web applications by delivering cached static content from server locations that are dispersed geographically.

If a customer in London sends a request to a website hosted in Washington DC, the response will be delivered from the nearest point, which might be a server

20

in New York, for example. This helps to speed up web page loading, which, whilst it is only one factor in responding to a customer’s request, is nevertheless one of the most significant.

PROTECTION FROM TRAFFIC SPIKES

As well as web acceleration, CDNs are also used to protect the web server from DDoS attacks or other significant spikes in web traffic. eCommerce websites can be overwhelmed by traffic, not just because of malicious cybercrime, but due to increased customer interest during the Peak season, for example, and in the world of gaming, the risk of a surge in traffic can come when a much-hyped game is launched, or a long-anticipated patch is released to the market.

A CDN with a high global network capacity will help to manage the deluge, and protect the web service from disruption, or even a full-scale outage.

Other challenges that enterprises face today in relation to security are also helped by using a CDN, including encrypting the transmission of data, securing applications through a web application firewall, access orchestration to determine how, and to whom, content is provided, and load balancing which helps to distribute incoming requests from users and manage traffic

congestion.

Whether the use case is a gaming company with millions of players relying on the stability and performance of its platform; a video streaming provider responsible for delivering a global sporting event; or a retailer about to make its new collection available via eCommerce and MCommerce, a decision needs to be taken about what CDN set-up will work best, and how much it is likely to cost.

COST IS NOT ALWAYS EQUATE TO QUALITY

Shockingly, the cost of one CDN provider can be up to 10 times more than another and this doesn’t necessarily reflect a better service. What is important when selecting a CDN is knowing what it will be used for and how it might be scaled in the future.

All CDN providers can amend the cost structure of their product by limiting the features and functionalities they offer. A content delivery only CDN will focus on static asset delivery, which means that a user will pay only for the traffic that moves through the provider’s caching servers.

Performance levels can also be limited according to budget, but

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

all CDN providers should deliver an acceptable level of network monitoring, partner peering, server hardware and commutation appliances. One way that providers keep costs low is by renting virtual servers to run CDN software or by reselling the service of a larger provider.

While this is standard, it does limit their ability to manage incidents or control performance.

Of course, in-house customer support is expensive to provide and will add to the product cost structure, so it is not something offered by every provider.

The fact is, however, that technology is becoming more affordable and at the same time, the hardware and software needed to deliver CDN services is more readily available, allowing a greater number of providers to get involved, creating competition that is driving prices down.

DERIVING VALUE

Because content delivery seems relatively simple compared with other infrastructure services, CDN providers add value to enhance their offer. This can include embedded security features, free monitoring, dynamic content acceleration, advanced compression and image optimisation.

The caching servers that enable CDNs to deliver static content are increasingly being used to provide supplementary software near to end-user devices, effectively transforming CDNs into edge optimisation platforms.

As this trend develops, endusers face even more complexity when it comes to deciding which CDN to select. Do they want TSL 1.3 encryption or not? How useful would an extended API be?

What protection would a web application firewall provide?

Will they need 24/7 technical support? What say do they have over traffic costs?

BEST PRACTICE FOR CHOOSING A CDN AT THE RIGHT PRICE

First, it’s essential for companies to understand how much traffic their website serves every month. Knowing this provides room for negotiation with CDN

providers, some of whom will include reasonable amounts of traffic in the overall cost, or even provide a free CDN plan.

If a company’s traffic is coming from one continent, Europe, for example, the cost should be very different to a company with global reach. Most CDN providers have geographically based pricing structures which means that companies can select a CDN that has the best offer to suit the location of their audience.

However, if they plan to expand into a new territory, that expansion needs to be allowed for in the initial negotiation.

Checking out the features included in a CDN provider’s standard plan provides a basis on which the right feature package can be built. Companies should research features first so they know what they will need.

When it comes to security, while it is tempting to

save money on some features, this can create vulnerability to DDoS attacks, other malware and incidents such as extreme weather events. Opting for a full range of security features means companies are comprehensively protected, and, if they offer web services to customers against set SLAs, they will not incur charges in the event of a disruption.

For enterprises there are benefits to opting for a multiCDN approach, which can not only reduce overall costs but is the most effective way to ensure seamless service delivery to a globally distributed audience.

Many CDN providers have spent years honing the services they provide, and their experience allows them to provide fantastic offers to customers.

Our own next-gen content delivery network, for example, will provide 1 TB of traffic and 1,000,000,000 HTTP requests for

free. Why? Because we believe small businesses should be able to make use of reliable, performant CDNs as they grow. We leverage a network of servers around the world with more than 110Tbps capacity, so we have some to spare.

To summarise, companies should do their homework and delve into what is on offer. They shouldn’t dismiss a CDN provider because they are cheap, but instead look at the features in the basic package and work out how much it would cost for addons. Discounts are available for companies of every size, so they should enter negotiations to get a great deal and ensure that the CDN provider ticks all the right boxes for their needs, their audience, and their growth plans.

Sebastian Spies is Product Director Edge Network at Gcore www.gcore.com

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CYBER SECUIRTY & FRAUD

Safe and sound?

Digesting the UK’s Online Safety Act and Europe’s DSA

Given Royal ascent last month, the UK has enacted its Online Safety Act 2023 and, while its intentions are good, it is likely to have both positive and negative impact. David Ashman takes a look at what it might mean for the telemedia market worldwide The UK Government’s Online Safety Act 2023 was given Royal Assent in October and presents a key opportunity for the evolution of the web.

While there is great detail contained within the Act, the key themes cover a range of powers to protect underage users from the darker forces at work online. These can be summarised in six key aims: • Zero-tolerance approach to protecting children, meaning social media platforms will be legally responsible for the content they host; • Empowering adults with more

choices over what they see; • Legal responsibility on tech companies to prevent and rapidly remove illegal content; • Enforce age limits and use age-checking measures on platforms where content harmful to children is published; • Stop children seeing material that is harmful to them such as bullying and pornography; • That there will be some general provision (detail not yet clear), placing advertising control obligation on providers.

However, like the principles of Newtonian dynamics, every ac-

tion has an equal and opposite reaction and for every good intention, there will be nefarious forces unpicking the legislation for its loopholes, to continue business as normal.

For the Online Safety Act, the first potential cracks have been exposed before the ink has dried. The UK Government’s definition may not align with definitions in play within other sectors of society, or worse there may even be discord and inconsistency between the public sector enforcement body and the aims of the legislator or wider public.

Where Europe’s Digital Services Act fits in Ratified in November 2022 – but not due to take effect until 17 February 2024 – the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) seeks to play a similar role to the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 which came into force in the UK in October 2023.

Designed to harmonise EU member state’s online safety rules which had diverged considerably as the online world pulled away from how it looked in 2000 when the E-commerce Directive sought to police how the web was used, the DSA joins the Digital Marketing Act (DMA) and everyone’s favourite GDPR – not to mention the proposed AI Act – as a phalanx of legislation designed to protect Europe’s web and ecommerce users.

The DSA is designed around five key themes: combatting illegal products; policing and removing illegal content; protection of children; sensitivity about racial and gender diversity; and a ban on ‘Dark Patterns’ – effectively rules to prevent shoppers from being manipulated into buying

22

things they don’t want or need. There are also plans to prevent tech companies ranking their own services more favourably than others, making it easier to uninstall pre-installed apps and replacing them with others.

For those that don’t comply there are heavy fines – up to 6% of global revenue – and, in the worst cases, a total ban from operating in Europe.

As with the UK Online Safety Act, the DSA has been broadly welcomed. Sam Media’s Leon Dijksman says that “The act would potentially protect children from being confronted with adult content and it will certainly makes things a lot more difficult for rogue affiliates and fraudulent advertisers – and I only expect a positive impact for the parties [involved]. There will also be less fraud and fewer complaints.”

However, like many in the industry, he admits that it will require a lot of effort and investments from advertising media and platforms to implement however it can only be good for business.

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

In this context, a pertinent example is the ongoing debate surrounding the term “Jihad.”

This term carries a dual definition, encompassing both an internal struggle to hold at bay one’s sinful urges, in addition to an external interpretation sometimes linked to acts that incite terrorism.

Context is important and the rising non-compliance we at MCP have identified with the placements of Google ads demonstrates this principle, as well as Google’s current challenge in controlling this without thirdparty assistance from compliance monitoring companies.

These subjectivities pose real jeopardy for social media companies forced to tread a line between principles of enabling free speech.

Who is the appropriate arbitrator: the personal opinion of an Ofcom employee; the complaints from a vocal few; the church; or, like the episode of Black Mirror, the oblivion of cancellation through an emotionally charged dislike button?

SCOPE AND JURISDICTION

The challenges with the scope and jurisdiction of country specific enforcement of internet activity are also an issue. Given the challenges that even authoritarian states have faced due to the ubiquity of VPNs, or the West has experience trying to control the Dark Web; whether the UK government can act unilaterally in regulating a global community has a very potent question mark hanging over it.

Content providers familiar with the DCB and mVAS sector are already familiar with the tools and techniques to monitor and control affiliate partners.

During my discussions with one of the social media giants – at the time looking to launch their own virtual currency – it was evident, despite drawing senior talent from the likes of PayPal, that the control of the wider

value chain was an alien and barely considered concept.

As mainstream businesses are thrust into the bright light of enhanced compliance, MCP’s monitoring expertise has already become attractive to the likes of Google and many more businesses in the coming months will need to adopt similar tools and services to discharge their new obligation to protect the public.

LEVELLING THE FIELD

The UK Bill contains provisions to combat fraudulent advertising, placing responsibility on the value-chain. With Ofcom, the intended regulator, the future regulations could very likely mirror those that the DCB industry is already very familiar; within the Phone-paid Service Authority Code. In many respects, the Online Safety Act could be seen to level the playing field.

Having had the forbearance rial needing to transfer behind of sitting through trade associa- age verification, could present tion meetings for over a decade, opportunities to reinvigorate the most frequent theme has paywalls. been the disparity between DCB payment regulations focus on HOW HARD IS THIS GOING the entire user journey and the TO BE TO IMPLEMENT? lesser standards demanded of It won’t be a walk in the park. It marketing around traditional will require consistent and meapayments such as credit and sured enforcement. Balancing debit cards. This has long been free speech and the prevention considered a disadvantage. of harmful content is a real chalHowever, the tide is now turning lenge. Plus, ensuring that everyas general legislation is moving one’s on the same page regardin the direction that the mobile ing definitions and compliance payments sector has already across different sectors adds significant experience. another layer of complexity.

For DCB payment providers The DCB and mVAS sector this will be an opportunity to does have an advantage. We’ve present a tried, tested and com- long been subjected to rigorous pliant solution to those compa- regulatory scrutiny in the UK nies that are currently exposed and already have the compliby these new requirements. ance solutions needed. So, Further, for providers of adult barring the issues of definitions, content, who have seen margins scope and jurisdiction, we’re in cannibalised by free sites, the good shape to implement aplikely outcome of such matepropriate solutions.

MCP has already invested in solutions to identify and control the types of promotion and content being displayed to children.

Grappling with other thorny issues, such as defining what environments are considered as being attractive to children, given the blurry boundary between cartoons and games with an equal or predominate adult target market.

How effective the legislation will be remains in the balance.

Consistent measured enforcement will be the lynchpin. The political will to stand up to the vested interests of the corporate giants will need to be vital.

Above all an understanding and the mandating of the right tech in the value chain will be crucial.

David Ashman is Head of Compliance MCP Insight www.mcpinsight.com

Looking for more bandwidth in sales or in need of supporting consultancy services?

Adam has over 20 years of experience working in service provider and mobile aggregator businesses in UK and abroad, creating Digital Engagement Solutions; offering sales consultancy and management expertise. He can advise and help your company in the following areas and more: · Premium billing on voice & mobile

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Driving value added services for voice and mobile

23

CYBER SECUIRTY & FRAUD

The good, the bad and the ugly How the industry is fighting DCB fraud As DCB has soared in popularity, so too has payment fraud. Paul Skeldon takes a look at how this has been combatted and where else in the world it is starting to bite As carrier billing grows, so too does fraud. After all, fraudsters tend to go where the money is. The carrier billing market was tipped to grow by around 29.7% between 2020 and 2029 and, as content services have exploded worldwide – especially snackable content and services that need a rapid on-boarding method – that growth is likely to be even higher.

However, as this use of carrier billing – and, to be fair other payment methods, including credit card – have grown, so too has fraud. Where there are payments, there will be fraud and DCB has attracted more than its fair share across the years.

But, in the past five years there has been a concerted effort across the telemedia sector to combat payment fraud. As DCB has exploded in popularity worldwide, so fraudsters have followed the money and relentlessly targeted it. Working together as an industry and forging strong links with the cyber security market is having an impact.

24

It is safe to say that pretty much everyone in the value chain – from merchants to SPs to payment providers to MNOs – have initiated some degree of basic DCB fraud protection.

But as basic fraudulent activities have decreased, there are still stresses and strains around payment fraud. As basic frauds have been all but eradicated in many markets, fraudsters have moved on to create more elaborate frauds (see page 25) and to target new and emerging markets where the basic level of DCB protection may not be as fulsome as it has become elsewhere.

According to Farid Taha, chief customer officer at security firm Evina, he has seen a lot of new, more elaborated ways of generating fraud. Fraudsters always look for the holes and they exploit them.

NEW MARKETS

The first ‘hole’ that fraudsters have identified are the new markets where DCB is getting a foothold. “We are seeing a lot

of activity in the Middle East markets as it’s a fast growing market, particularly in Saudi [Arabia] and the UAE. We have seen a lot of technical fraud similar to what we used to see in other markets, but we are also seeing misleading flows and other frauds here.”

This is particularly prevalent in 2023 in Turkey and Oman. While technical fraud is still happening in Europe, it is in the Middle East – and to some extent Africa – where this is growing.

“These are very new, rapidly growing markets, with a lot of new players and a lot of competition,” says Taha. “What we see in the Middle East are markets that suddenly have 50, 60, 70 new service providers all buying traffic and all competing with each other. Many of these players are wrapped up in competition and so haven’t looked at co-operating on fraud.”

The fraudsters, like any business, look for the richest pickings so that they can make the best return on their investment in data and the equipment needed for fraud.

“And the players in the market are not mature yet to protect themselves so there is still a lot

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

of room for fraud activity,” says Taha.

CALL IN THE EXPERTS

As has been seen across other markets, the players in these new, vulnerable markets need to rely on co-operation and outside fraud experts if they are to rapidly counter these technical frauds that are happening in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Taha believes that all players need to bring in the simplest forms of protection as standard right away – and to do this MNOs and SPs need to co-operate with each other to make it happen. Only then can these basic frauds be rapidly removed from the system.

“It is relatively simple, if the fraudsters can’t do simple payment frauds they will look elsewhere and then customers are safe – and at the end of the day that is what matters.”

The downside, as seen across other markets where this strategy has already has a positive impact on basic payment fraud has been that the fraudsters turn to other methods to tap the market… but that, as they say, is another story (see page 25).

New wave

CYBER SECUIRTY & FRAUD

How fraud moved on As the industry has taken strides in beating DCB fraud, so the fraudsters have upped their game. Paul Skeldon takes a look at the next generation of telemedia fraud – and what can be done about it While DCB fraud in its most basic forms is in abeyance in many markets, fraudsters have had to evolve and, even inventive, have created a raft of new frauds to tap into the exploding global market for VAS. As explored (see page 24), DCB fraud in its most basic forms has been smothered by a raft of high tech solutions that now rapidly and effectively identify and neutralise flow based frauds in many markets. Sure, the fraudsters have switched to new markets such as those in MENA where newly minted competition sees opens for payment flow fraud, but it doesn’t mean that fraudsters have abandoned the other markets. They have just changed tack.

“Fraudsters need to make a return on investment and, if you can’t do DCB fraud, they you do something else,” says Farid Taha, chief customer officer at anti-fraud firm Evina. “Ad fraud, malware and manipulation fraud are all now starting to gain traction as new ‘revenue streams’ for fraudsters and the industry has to be on its toes worldwide to stay on top of this too.”

WHAT ARE THESE FRAUDS

These new frauds take many guises, but typically can be broken down into those that use misleading adverts, those that install malware that is then exploited and then good old fashioned manipulation frauds.

Ad fraud sees users faced with adverts on legitimate sites the look to advertising something

legit but take you elsewhere – often to buy fraudulent content – that simply steals their money.

Malware fraud involved adverts linking to pages or content that installs malware that gains access to the user’s device that the fraudster either can then directly exploit themselves or access to which they can sell to other fraudsters.

Then there is manipulation fraud that uses ad and other messaging to trick people into buying things they don’t need or want.

All of these are growing, driven by the need to create new frauds to compensate for the drop off in carry billing fraud.

“Ad fraud is definitely growing rapidly,” says Thomas Tinker from MCP. “And it is easy to see why.

It often appears on legitimate sites and can even be served up

by Google. It is very hard for the consumer to spot.”

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Tackling these ad frauds is hard.

They look so legitimate that they are hard to spot. Consumers can’t and even for established anti-fraud companies it has been a challenge to rapidly find ways to beat it.

“AI is often used to create the ads and AI holds the key to spotting everything from misleading flows to fraudulent ads. It can even play a role in trying to counter manipulation fraud,” says Taha.

Tinker agrees and believes that, as has been seen in many markets in the battle against DCB

fraud, co-operation is key. “I believe there needs to be a panindustry effort to detect and educate around these frauds. The fraud journey needs to be understood and collaboration on this is key.”

Ross Flynn, project manager at industry body the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) agrees. “Payment fraud is down overall, but ad fraud is growing – it is going to be huge. But we can get in early with policing it.

Merchants, SPs and MNOs all need to work together to spot it and create ways to tackle it.

This is where industry bodies like MEF and entities such as Telemedia magazine and the World Telemedia events play a vital role in bringing the right people together to beat fraud.”

Driving value added services for voice and mobile

25

CYBER SECUIRTY & FRAUD

On the horizon

Fraudsters are nothing if not adaptable. Paul Skeldon takes a look at some of the other frauds that are growing and which are set to impact the market in the year ahead

Data roaming fraud set to grow 700% As 5G takes hold globally, outbound data roaming on mobile is set to generate some 2.2 million petabytes (PB) of data by 2028 – for perspective it is around 23,000PB in 2023. However, this growth in roaming traffic will lead to increased opportunities for fraudsters, such as SIM box fraud, in which data is allocated through local routes rather than monetisable roaming channels.

According to data from Juniper research, these frauds could account for more than 218PB of that data, costing MNOs and businesses dear, topping $8bn. It is already set to account for 80% of global operator roaming-based losses by 2024.

As bilateral 5G roaming agreements proliferate, the research predicts operators will deploy more sophisticated fraud mitigation tools. The greater amount of data that 5G roaming connections generate will require the development of solutions that can detect fraudulent users and traffic over new 5G networks as they evolve. An example is the rise in 5G subscription fraud, whereby fraudsters create new subscriptions with false information;

incurring roaming charges without intending to pay. Until the subscription is cancelled, fraudsters will continue anonymously using 5G roaming data, with operators losing potential roaming revenue.

Research author Rosie O’Connor says: “Operators must implement 5G-specific signalling detection and firewalls that offer real-time monitoring and ID-registry analysis. Only then, can operators more efficiently identify subscription fraud across 100 million 5G roaming connections predicted globally in 2024.”

Fraud mitigation services will alert operators of any potentially fraudulent activity across 5G networks in real time and enable them to identify and block suspicious roaming subscribers. This will enable operators to minimise fraudulent activity, and therefore reduce the impact on their roaming revenue.

Social media scams generate $1.2bn in 2023 Social media scams earned fraudsters an astounding $658m in H1 2023 alone, exponentially higher than any other contact method – and likely to go beyond $1.2bn by year end.

According to data from Atlas VPN , 83,302 fraud instances originating from social media were recorded in the first half of 2023. Social media fraud reports have tripled since 2020, when 25,459 instances were registered.

The report shows that these social media scams surpassed all other contact methods, with social media fraud reports up more than threefold since 2020, when there were 25,459 instances, according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data.

Younger people, mainly those aged 20-29, were the most susceptible to social media scams, accounting for 38% of all fraud cases. Scammers targeted older generations through websites/ apps (ages 60-69), phone calls (ages 70-79 and 80+), and other methods.

Most social media fraud charges result from attempts to purchase items advertised on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat. However, investment scamming was the most profitable, accounting for 53% of lost funds.

26

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

Remote goods fraud driven by payments innovation One of the greatest merchant losses to fraud is likely to come from remote physical goods purchases, with losses reaching $5.1bn across emerging markets in 2028, up from $1bn in 2023.

Juniper Research data anticipates fraud losses in Africa & Middle East to reach $1.1bn in 2028; growing 643% from $150m this year. This is largely due to limited adoption of effective fraud prevention tools in the region. Such tools are needed to keep pace with the rapidly increasing number of transactions, evolving payment methods and growing threats.

The research urged players to implement AI for analysing trends in fraudster behaviour. This is important in emerging regions, as smartphone adoption causes mcommerce to grow at a rapid rate

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MEET THE PEOPLE

Meet the

PEOPLE

Rohit Maheshwari, Head of Strategy and Products, Subex What does your company do?

Subex is a telecom AI company enabling connected experiences for communication service providers (CSPs) across the globe.

Founded in 1994, Subex helps its customers maximise revenues and profitability. With a legacy of having served the market through world-class solutions for business optimisation and analytics, Subex is now leading the way by enabling the creation of connected experiences in the telecom industry.

Which content and/or applications do you see being the most likely to benefit from telemedia billing technologies?

There is a great story around telco fintech as a significant enabler for banking the unbanked: providing credits and microcredits in developing markets. There are definitely opportunities and new use cases emerging. In multi-SIM geographies, once a customer is on-boarded for telco fintech/ wallet services the stickiness goes up and churn goes down.

There are very interesting use cases around utilising AI and analytics for microlending and microcredit – predicting customer needs to ensure seamless experiences. For example, if someone is watching a football match and is about to run out of credit, their account can be automatically topped up based on analysis

30

of their previous behaviours – they are seen as good credit risk for example. Retail float management can be better controlled based on predictions, and micro lending to small traders can automatically be extended credit based on their wallet history. All these services are made more efficient through the use of AI and data analytics.

How do you see AI transforming the telecoms business model?

Not just the business model – AI is going to be embedded in every aspect of product strategy and decision making. There is a lot of promise in AI, preventing bottlenecks in telco services, helping telcos write code and create generative AI campaigns.

There will be much unlocking of productivity thanks to AI and all areas of the telco will benefit, whether activities are product launches or network operations.

What key advice would you give telcos looking to reap the benefits of AI? Telcos need to assess their AI readiness both in terms of understanding how use cases will benefit from AI and also the strategic initiatives that need to be taken to leverage AI – the availability of technology, people management and change management. AI has to be owned from the top – it has to be a boardroom conversation – and when that happens there

will be a tremendous amount of use cases unlocked by AI. We are already seeing some telcos take tremendous leap in this direction Imagine a current telco ten years from now that has seized and exploited the potential of AI – what does it look like?

In these times of disruptive change, ten years is a long time! Five years is long enough to be disruptive. Today telcos are a people-to-people conversation – in the future it will be a ‘my agent-to-your agent conversation’.

Generative AI is changing the way the consumer perceives the telco, and vice versa.

Telcos will leverage generative

AI to make the customer experience seamless. The ‘first call resolution’ is traditionally low – now the AI agent of the customer will interact with the AI agent of the telco and the goal will be to get resolution on first call and the shortest time possible Traditionally, telco customers subscribe to and see Netflix, YouTube content – future consumers will have the capability to generate their own content according to their taste.

With generative AI taking over, a lot more time will be liberated for people. There will more time for creativity and leisure, as AI solves some of the biggest challenges of productivity.

Your words of wisdom: On a more personal level, what is the most inspiring piece of advice that has seen you through a life in business to this day and who gave that advice to you?

Be hungry for knowledge and information. Be inquisitive – be willing to learn new things. That was the advice I was given when I started 25 years ago. Since then, those principles have enabled me to continue exploring the changes that are happening and to enjoy an enriching career.

EOPLE? le’, P E H T T E E M O WANT T your company to ‘meet the peop e nnaire, If you would lik simple questio r ou in l fil is do all you have to more details send it in. For d an ot sh ad take a he om ine@w tevent.c contac t: gerald

More news, views and analysis at www.TelemediaOnline.co.uk

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