Carrier off-portal revenue to double in 2011: Study

By Mickey Alam Khan

February 12, 2008

MBlox claims to be the world’s largest mobile transaction network

A new study claims that wireless carriers will more than double their revenues from off-portal entertainment within three years.

Research from mobile transaction network mBlox shows that carrier revenues will grow to $8 billion by 2011compared with $3 billion last year. Value-added and enabling services to off-portal publishers will be the main reasons for the surge.

The new revenue will originate from three newly emerging areas, Sunnyvale, CA-based mBlox said: WAP billing, sender pays data and handset/subscriber data. These services will help third-party content and service providers to deliver rich mobile entertainment on mobile Web.

Most carriers currently generate off-portal content revenue from premium SMS, SMS and short code rentals.

Conducted in conjunction with Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, the mBlox research is a reminder of the growing important of off-portal services to carriers.

MBlox claims to be the world’s largest mobile transaction network, with offices in London and Singapore in addition to its Silicon Valley base. The company said it delivered more than 2 billion application-to-person transactions last year, or 63 application-to-person messages sent each second.

The transactions include mobile-originated and terminated messages and premium SMS for mobile commerce, marketing and entertainment. Nearly 50 million unique subscribers each month are said to interact with mobile content services through the mBlox transaction network.