Grey-route pressure on A2P messaging corridors. Where SMS firewalls are catching grey traffic, which sender IDs are getting stripped, and what the per-message leakage actually looks like.
Contact Sales Back to ObservatoriesMobilesquared estimated cumulative A2P revenue leakage from grey routes at $36.52 billion over five years. That is the gap between what operators should have billed and what they actually billed. We track where the gap is widest.
Prepaid SIMs pump what is really A2P traffic over P2P routes. Per-message cost is low. Termination settlement is zero. MNO loses.
By 2022, 82% of MNOs ran a next-gen SMS firewall. Sender ID gets stripped, message gets dropped. Brand never knows.
The aggregator says delivered. The MNO firewall says blocked. The brand keeps paying. The OTP keeps failing.
Two-factor authentication is the largest A2P use case globally. A failed OTP often means a failed signup. The hidden cost dwarfs the per-message rate.
Industry data point
$36.52B
Estimated cumulative global A2P SMS revenue leakage from grey routes (Mobilesquared / Sinch).
AZN does not contribute to this number. White routes only.
Volume of grey-route traffic detected at the MNO firewall per corridor, indexed against white-route volume.
How often the alphanumeric sender ID survives end-to-end. Stripped sender IDs mean the firewall does not trust the source.
Delivery receipts that match actual handset delivery. Where DLR says delivered and the message never arrived, the gap is the leakage.
A snapshot of grey-route pressure by region. Updated continuously; refreshed here quarterly.
High
Smishing volumes concentrated here per CFCA. MNO firewalls aggressive. Sender ID pre-registration strict.
High
High-volume corridors. Heavy SIM farm activity. DLT registration in India has helped; bypass still significant.
Mixed
Variable. Some markets clean; others see persistent SIM farm traffic. Sender ID rules vary by operator.
Low
10DLC registration and TCR have largely cleaned up the corridor. Grey pressure is minimal.
The published numbers are aggregated by region. The corridor view is shared with carriers under NDA.
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