As use of over-the-top (OTT) communications services continues to grow, demand for wireless data has soared. Today’s mobile network operators, while making infrastructure investments to meet this demand, also face declining messaging volumes and revenue due to the popularity of these third-party OTT alternatives. 

I often write about how OTTs can suffer from quality of service issues that operator-provided, standards-based services do not. I ran across an article last week that illustrates this point quite well. Path, a messaging app similar to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, recently sent out an SMS to everyone in a group of users' phonebooks—from ex-boyfriends to business associates—indicating that the sender had photos available for them on Path. “Not the kind of thing you would want sent to your buddy's wife on a Friday night,” the article aptly notes.

Written by Rafael A. Junquera, Director of editorial at TeleSeman.com 

The debate over how mobile operators can offset Over-the-Top (OTT) providers is ongoing as these players are capturing smartphone users, and operators are debating a solution to the dilemma through their events and forums. 

Mobile users sent more messages with OTTs in 2012 than with SMS, according to a new research from Informa. It states that third-party app users sent an average of 19.1 billion messages per day in 2012, compared with 17.6 billion texts per day with SMS.

The ease and convenience of messaging services have made Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) an indispensable part of mobile users' lives today.