Mobile interaction vendor Tyntec has signed a partnership with Polish operator P4 to provide OTT communication services that it claims will generate new revenue streams as well as helping it to gain some control over the OTT market.
The deal, which is the first of its kind in Europe, works as a two-way process.
P4’s brand PLAY will provide local SIM-free mobile numbers onto which Tyntec bolts tt.One, its cloud-based, two-way communications system.
Sitting between web-based services and mobile devices, tt.One is targeted at enterprises and app developers on the one hand and operators, including MVNOs, ISPs and MVNEs, on the other.
Tyntec wants operators to give app developers the ability to offer users an OTT communications service that includes free or low cost SMS, extended VoIP, dual SIM cards and anonymous voice chat, whereby the operator controls the data traffic from the app and gains a commission from the use of the virtual mobile numbers.
tt.One also supports a wide range of standards and protocols including MAP, SCCP, SS7 and TDM, making it easy to integrate into existing systems.
As well as requiring no SIM cards, there is no need for additional infrastructure at the core network level.
Tyntec thinks it has found a gap in the market given that OTT messaging services like Skype are not able to offer SMS services. Users can purchase a virtual landline number from Skype to receive calls, but cannot send and receive SMS.
“The question is, where do [operators] get the revenues from? In the OTT market, the operator gets nothing. Our inbound solution enables operators to receive a commission as we provide the billing solution so the operator is in the technical end of the revenue stream,” Tyntec CTO Thorsten Trapp told Mobile Europe.
“Today you cannot get a mobile telephone number which gives you voice and SMS inbound without a SIM card, but as an OTT layer, you don’t need the SIM card,” he said.
Similar solutions like Pinger and Text+ are already popular in the US, where users can turn the iPod Touch and the iPad into a mobile phone, as long as there is Wi-Fi.
“In Europe there are no third-party offerings that give you a SIM-less number with voice and text and not enough networks capable of offering this.”
The vendor confirmed it is in talks with providers of popular OTT apps as well as European operators. Several more operator deals set to be announced in the coming weeks, according to Trapp.
The CTO added that he is sceptical about the future of RCS-e and Joyn.
“We do not believe that RCS-e will go anywhere. If it does, there will be a huge gap between the OTT players and the classic telephony market. We’re trying to bring this to the carriers. They are late and they need to have an answer,” he stressed.
“The only thing you can do is stop the draining and put telephone numbers on those third party apps. Operators would like to do this, it’s absolutely a need for them.
“When you see what happened to the instant messenger community, they didn’t interwork and they all suffered a lot. You can solve that by using a mobile number to expand your reach without peering.”