Over-the-top (OTT) business messaging traffic will grow from 390-billion messages in 2025 to more than 560-billion by 2027, according to a new study by Juniper Research.
This substantial two-year growth is attributable to WhatsApp’s aggressive pricing strategy, which offers authentication rates 50% to 90% lower than traditional A2P SMS one-time passcodes.
Juniper Research expects this will enable WhatsApp to rapidly capture market share from network operators.
“By first securing authentication traffic, WhatsApp is laying the groundwork to move into higher-value business messaging. Once enterprises are onboarded for authentication, WhatsApp must upsell to marketing use cases, where termination fees are far higher and the real revenue opportunity lies,” says Molly Gatford, senior research analyst at Juniper Research.
To combat WhatsApp’s pricing foothold, network operators should introduce use case-based pricing for SMS and RCS Business Messaging. To achieve this, Juniper Research advises operators to partner with providers capable of accurately classifying messages by use case at scale using AI-driven tools and behavioural analysis to ensure reliable use case-based billing.
“By adopting a use case-based pricing strategy that is consistent across SMS and RCS, operators will enable enterprises to better assess RCS’s added value over SMS. This helps operators to retain business messaging traffic across these channels and avoid losing market share to OTT platforms,” Gatford says.