Belgian carrier BICS is drawing heavily on its legacy in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage for its new communications platform as a service (CPaaS).

Like other offerings, BICS’s new service comes with all the bells and whistles that enterprises have come to expect from CPaaS, such as a single dashboard view of all customer interactions carried out via multiple comms channels like voice, SMS, messaging and so-on. It also provides all the tools enterprises may need to conduct personalised, multi-channel marketing campaigns, and measure their effectiveness.

Where BICS hopes to stand apart though is with its carrier-grade backbone network, which reaches 180 countries and 900 operators. It claims it adds a point of difference to its CPaaS offering when it comes to reliability and security.

Indeed, one advantage of having a big network is that it offers direct A2P SMS connectivity to more destinations, reducing the temptation to avoid grey routes. This is when bulk messages are sent via an intermediary mobile network that has no commercial agreement with the destination network, thereby enabling the sender to avoid network fees. It’s not necessarily illegal, but it is frowned upon and is less reliable than sending messages directly.

Another advantage of BICS carrying calls and messages over its own network is that it can offer end-to-end security and antifraud capabilities. This isn’t always the case when comms are carried over the public Internet.

“We are not re-inventing CPaaS – what we’re doing is bridging our trusted communications network established over decades to meet the demand from enterprises for scalable, reliable, and secure communication services. While the software capabilities to plug such services into enterprises’ offerings already exists on the market, the reliability of such services is not always there,” said Divya Ghai Wakankar, VP of enterprise business and marketing at BICS, in a statement.

“BICS’s software is backed up by a leading global network and guarantees ultra-high quality of delivery. This is the peace of mind enterprises are searching for in today’s CPaaS environment and is more and more of a priority in this age of hyper-connectivity,” she said.

CPaaS is considered by enterprises to be an important aspect of digital transformation. They believe it offers a route to closer, stronger relationships with end users, and provides better upselling opportunities. Being able to engage productively with customers over SMS, social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp also reduces the reliance on more costly call centres.

Preliminary figures shared in May by messaging research firm Mobilesquared suggest that global CPaaS revenue could reach $15.2 billion this year, up from $10.7 billion in 2021. By 2024, the market could be worth as much as $30.2 billion. In addition, a joint survey carried out by messaging provider Sinch and IDC earlier this year revealed that 79 percent of enterprises have begun or plan to roll out conversational customer engagement within the next two years. 52 percent of these enterprises plan to use CPaaS.

“The CPaaS market is growing bigger each year. We were well aware of this when entering the market,” said BICS CEO Matteo Gatta.

“We’re not just providing enterprises with a software layer here, we are also managing the delivery. We’ve come up with a software toolbox that looks at software as part of the whole package,” he continued. “We’ve been delivering communications services for business for a long time, and our leadership in the telco space and top-class telecoms fraud protection means we have the core competencies to deliver a CPaaS experience that offers much greater quality, security, and reliability.”

Get the latest news straight to your inbox. Register for the Telecoms.com newsletter here.