Flash calling is a serious issue facing mobile network operators (MNO) today. A growing trend in authentication, flash calls have the potential to cut out MNOs from their application-to-person (A2P) revenue completely. By using dropped calls as a method of authentication – application owners are bypassing fees they would otherwise owe to a MNO while still using their network for authentication. Since dropped calls are normally not metered, commercial Apps are able to authenticate their user for essentially free while MNOs eat the cost of their infrastructure being used without any revenue. 

How flash calling works

When a one-time password (OTP) or A2P communication is generated for a user to authenticate them, the end-user receives an automated call to their mobile device from a bank of phones owned by the application provider. The call is then dropped as soon as it reaches the user's phone – avoiding charges from MNOs. The application then searches their call logs for the specific range of phone numbers that are used for flash calling, and verifies users if they find a match. Due to the fact that many MNOs don’t track missed calls this is a difficult issue to detect, with many only being able to see it in the decrease in A2P and authentication SMS revenue. 

This trend in authentication is rapidly growing. Large companies such as WhatsApp are already rolling out flash calling programs in India and the demand for flash calling is looking at a stellar period of growth. The market for flash calling will only grow larger as it saves application providers large amounts of money and promises to deliver a seamless authentication process. 

Flash calling is a risk to MNO authentication revenue. Every day that this isn’t identified and disrupted is a growing threat to an MNO’s authentication revenue. 

Flash Call Defender protects MNO revenue and stops this problem in its tracks

Flash Call Defender is the premier service offered by Mobius for ensuring that flash calls are disrupted and cannot reliably happen on a network. One technique that we utilize works by analyzing an MNO’s network traffic, including all missed or drop calls on that network and runs thorough pattern analyses on it. It then identifies numbers which have made and dropped calls consistently and further vets that they are not human. Phone numbers which are found to be making consistently dropped calls then get automatically blacklisted from your network. 

By doing this, Flash Call Defender helps to protect MNO revenue by disrupting the reliability of making flash calls on their network. This forces application providers to use registered authentication channels on the network, allowing the MNO to rightfully monetize the use of its network.