A2P hits warp speed

ATLANTA--

Despite the fact the application-to-person (A2P) market is still in its infancy, two vendors this week are announcing new architectures designed to speed the delivery of multimedia messages to users who opt-in for such services from content providers like Fox Sports and Disney.

Comverse used CTIA to launch its MMS A2P Expeditor, which is designed to bypass the existing MMS infrastructure. The architecture, which is in trial with at least one wireless carrier, allows A2P traffic to be handled separately from traditional MMS traffic, which operates as a peer-to-peer service. Also at CTIA’s show, 724 Solutions announced its X-treme Accelerator, which lets carriers send bulk MMS notifications and large-volume MMSs.

With both vendors’ architecture, MMS traffic is put on a separate network element and routed either through the carrier’s MMS server nearest the user or direct to the handset. While A2P traffic is minimal at the moment, the potential revenue generated by it should be fairly significant, said Stephen Kenyon, assistant vice president of marketing for the Americas for Comverse.

For carriers, that could mean a flood messages that must be handled on a timely basis, leading to major bottlenecks on existing infrastructure, said Alan Stebbens, principal product manager for 724.

“People sending things to people is a fairly predictable,” Stebbens said. “Computers sending things to people is almost an unmanageable problem [for current infrastructure].”

Under most scenarios, the A2P market will take off when large consumer brands start launching marketing campaigns with significant wireless elements. Additionally, consumers may take some time to get used to the idea of MMS, particularly in the U.S.

“People need to be trained a little on MMS,” Kenyon said.