Mobile operator revenue from SMS business traffic will reach $50 billion in 2025 as against $39.6 billion in 2020 — driven by the cut in illegitimate traffic due to the implementation of SMS firewalls.

Fraudulent traffic will decrease by 75 percent from 539 billion messages in 2020 to 138 billion in 2025, Juniper Research said.

Operators will experience significant benefits as traffic delivered over legitimate channels increases, with operator revenue lost to illegitimate channels drastically reducing from $5.8 billion in 2020 to $1.2 billion in 2025.

The top 5 vendors leading Juniper Research’s SMS Firewall Vendor Positioning Index are:

# Infobip

# Mavenir

# Mobileum

# Proofpoint

# Tata Communications

Leading SMS Firewall vendors offer advanced analytics within their firewall offerings; using natural language processing and machine learning to combat fraudulent activity.

Juniper Research co-author Scarlett Woodford said machine learning is crucial to combatting fraud, as it enables network operators to compete with the constantly evolving tactics of malevolent players.

“SMS firewall vendors must implement machine learning techniques to detect new fraudulent tactics, or they risk losing market share to more technologically-adept vendors,” Scarlett Woodford said.

North America will witness the most significant decline in illegitimate traffic, with volumes decreasing from 178.4 billion in 2020 to 1 billion in 2025 — driven by firewall adoption by operators in North America, who are keen to offset falling voice revenue.