In today’s wireless marketplace, generating incremental revenue from the same subscriber base has become increasingly difficult. Average revenue per user has remained relatively flat for years, while customer expectations for network performance, service quality, and personal experiences continue to rise. For many carriers, particularly those serving rural and regional markets, this creates ongoing pressure to deliver more without increases to subscriber’s monthly charges.

This imbalance forces carriers to take a hard look at how sustainable a subscriber-only revenue model really is. When growth depends almost entirely on monthly recurring charges, opportunities to expand become limited, especially in competitive markets where price sensitivity is high and differentiation is challenging. Continuing to rely on the same drivers often leads to diminishing returns.

Looking Beyond Subscriber Ownership

What’s changing is not demand for mobile services, but where value is being created. Carriers are increasingly finding that future growth will come from engaging new customer segments rather than extracting additional spend from existing subscribers. That shift requires looking beyond traditional subscriber ownership and reconsidering how carrier-controlled assets, particularly messaging, can support new revenue paths.

One of the most impactful changes in perspective is moving from a subscriber-centric view of revenue to a device-centric one. As carriers expand offerings like fixed wireless, devices are increasingly treated as revenue-generating endpoints, making every mobile user addressable regardless of which carrier bills them each month. This opens the door to enterprise messaging, brand engagement, and application-to-person (A2P) traffic that flows across networks, not just within them.

A2P Messaging Creates Local Revenue

Application-to-person messaging, particularly SMS, has been steadily growing since the early 2000s and is now one of the most effective engagement channels for businesses. High open rates and a strong preference among consumers to engage via messaging have made it central to both marketing and customer care strategies. As a result, enterprises increasingly rely on messaging to reach customers quickly and reliably.

Regional carriers are uniquely positioned to benefit from this growth. Unlike national carriers, they often maintain trusted relationships with small and mid-sized businesses in their communities. By enabling A2P messaging for local retailers, school districts, healthcare

providers, utilities, and municipal organizations, carriers can monetize outbound messaging tied to customer bases that extend far beyond their own subscriber footprint. Importantly, these campaigns frequently reach customers across multiple carrier networks, creating revenue opportunities that originate locally but scale across the broader ecosystem.

RBM Shifts Messaging Transport to Engagement

Beyond SMS, RCS Business Messaging (RBM) represents the next phase of enterprise engagement. By combining the reach of messaging with richer, app-like experiences, RBM enables brands to deliver verified, interactive, and measurable communications. Earlier efforts to drive adoption focused largely on subscriber-facing features, which limited momentum. Today, adoption is being driven by enterprise demand and evolving customer engagement expectations.

Consumers increasingly expect to interact with brands through messaging, whether to receive updates, confirm appointments, complete transactions, or access support. This creates a natural pull effect, where subscribers adopt enhanced messaging because it is where businesses are engaging them. For carriers, this changes the role of messaging from a passive network capability to an active revenue driver.

RCS Ubiquity Expands the Opportunity

The recent expansion of RCS-capable iOS devices has significantly increased the addressable market for these interactions especially in the U.S. where iPhone penetration is 60 percent. With broad device support now in place, carriers can enable RCS functionality across their subscriber base without requiring action from end users. This allows subscribers to participate in a growing messaging ecosystem that businesses are actively investing in, while carriers benefit from traffic generated outside traditional subscriber billing models.

A Path Forward for Regional Carriers

For rural and regional carriers, innovation does not require national scale. It requires strategic focus. Messaging remains one of the few carrier-controlled assets that spans subscribers, enterprises, and competing networks alike. By shifting attention from subscriber-only monetization to messaging-driven engagement, carriers can unlock new revenue streams rooted in their infrastructure, community relationships, and ability to move quickly.

The next phase of growth will not come from charging subscribers more. It will come from identifying new targets and enabling the messaging experiences and consumers are already asking for and are engaging in.

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