#008 How aggregators miss the party

Happy new year dear friends, follower and family! Today I want to start 2024 with a little explanation why it seems to me aggregators miss the RBM party while focusing on much more limited and more expensive channels like Whatsapp just because it's superficial easier to explain/ sell maybe.

We as MNO whose use Google as RBM platform provider have access to an admin console to approve agent launch requests and suspend services if needed or to reach out to the developer or brand if necessary.

As there is no link between Google and us about signed commercial agreements, everyone who opens up a Google Developer Account can setup an RBM Agent and send it to all Google supported countries and MNOs for approval.

That means we receive ALL launch requests, no matter if it's a known customer of us or not. Saying that we see nearly 2 launch requests every week coming in that we have to reject cause of missing commercial agreement in place. See "rejects" in the screenshot.

Our reply/ reject text is like "to reach TEF GER enduser via Google RBM it needs a commercial agreement first. If you want to proceed please reach out to TEF GER or check www.rcsbusinessmessaging.de/en about potential aggregators."

Within the relaunch of our cross MNO RBM website we will show all aggregators that has signed with all GER MNO to make it easier for prospects to reach out for cross country coverage.

Anyway, we see around 10 service launch requests a month that we have to reject and that shows aggregators are not where the developers and companies seems to be to collect the needs upfront and guide them what to do.

Beside country specific regulations it's about commercials, approval processes, agent guidelines, reach/ coverage etc.; I hope to see more dedication in 2024 to use that market demand to show RBM success and look forward to connect Apple too.

Due to fair competition policy we can't just forward all unknown requester to a singular provider than to leave it with them whom to contact. 1 of 10 is reaching out to us directly after the initial reject to discuss a commercial agreement that we can't sign everytime due to various reasons, but this shows 9 will stay unsolved and missed by the market...

For the future it needs more (local) presence of enablers to be visible when someone wants to extend his communication with SMS / multimedia SMS / RCS / RBM imho to not peter out available opportunities of the market. Go for it and shift focus!

Yours, #B