Sri Lanka to implement international A2P SMS centre to confront fraud, spam

The Sri Lankan government says it is planning to implement an International A2P (Application-to-Person) short message services (SMS) centre.

The Cabinet of Ministers, at its meeting on Monday (Jan.01), approved a proposal tabled by President Ranil Wickremesinghe aimed at regularizing short message exchanges in order to confront fraud and spam and other illegal activities.

A2P is the process of sending mobile messages from a business application to a mobile user, usually via an automated process, for marketing or service reasons.

The SMS is commonly used for various objectives including the evaluation of enterprises and transactions as a decisive communication media for citizens, businesses and government institutions. These messages are distributed by an individual across an app or a system to a mobile device as SMS, multimedia message (MMS) or any other type of message.

Noting that the excessive use of short message systems has led to fraud, spam and illegal activities, the government said it had observed the requirement for a centralized short message system network security appliance firewall (SMS Firewall) to regularize short message exchange in order to confront such challenges.

Accordingly, a proposal had been submitted for implementing an international A2P short message services centre by Infobip, a United Kingdom-based private company.

The Cabinet of Ministers approved the resolution furnished by the President to appoint a technical committee comprised of representatives from the Ministry of Finance, Economic Stabilization and National Policies; Ministry of Technology; and Sri Lanka Telecommunication Regulation Commission to evaluate the said proposal and table recommendations thereby.