On 2 June, MEF brought together operators, hyperscalers, aggregators and vendors at Trinity College Dublin for the CPaaS Evolution Summit — a day designed to cut through the noise and take stock of where enterprise communications is actually heading.
By Cathal Lyons, Openmind Networks
Here are some of the key themes that stood out for us.
1. RCS has a serious tailwind — and Google is pushing hard
The shift is visible. Google is actively accelerating operator onboarding for RCS in a way that wasn’t happening previously. A panel featuring Tim Atkinson (Google), Arthur Benda (Orange France) and Colm Sunderland (BT International) explored the growing variety of on-ramps to RCS. The standout example: Message Me buttons embedded directly in Google business listings, letting consumers initiate RCS conversations with small businesses in a single tap. New P2P workflows like this are quietly rewriting how enterprises think about customer engagement. The consensus — operator adoption is the remaining constraint, and the work to fix that is underway.
2. Multi-channel is the only realistic CPaaS strategy
RCS leads the experience conversation, but no single channel wins outright. The summit reinforced that enterprises need coherent strategies spanning RCS, WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber and email. The CPaaS providers that will win are those who abstract that complexity and deliver consistency across all of them.
3. WhatsApp is eating operator messaging revenue — and the clock is ticking
This was said plainly and often. WhatsApp represents a structural threat to operator A2P revenue. Operators who have not invested in CPaaS or RCS enterprise offerings are already losing ground — and it will compound. The window to get ahead of this is narrowing.
4. SMS A2P is under pressure from multiple directions
OTP revenue — long a reliable SMS earner — is under attack. Silent authentication, flash calling and in-app authentication are all encroaching. Meanwhile, logistics, marketing and notification use cases that have sustained SMS A2P are being superseded by OTT solutions. Operators need to be running ahead of these developments, not reacting to them.
5. AI is the force multiplier across all of it
From Nick Millward’s opening view of the market to the closing fireside with Pinder Takhar (Lyberate), AI ran through every session. Small businesses deploying agents to handle queries and close sales over RCS. Operators using AI layers to analyse traffic patterns and shut down fraud before it lands. ENEA’s Iftikar Waheed framed it clearly — the CPaaS providers who turn messaging insights into intelligence will have a decisive competitive advantage. The infrastructure is getting smarter in real time.
6. Fraud has moved beyond SMS — and the industry needs to catch up
Fraud actors are moving across channels. Agent verification needs to run alongside SMS traffic analysis and blocking. The challenge for the ecosystem is building defences that are as channel-agnostic as the attackers. This is exactly the problem Openmind’s OpenProtectAI is built to solve. [Optional product tie-in paragraph here.]
Conclusion
Things are moving fast in messaging. The summit made clear that the operators and providers who act now — on RCS, on multi-channel, on AI, on fraud — will define the next era of enterprise communications. Those who wait may find the decisions have already been made for them.
