A value-added service (VAS) is a popular

telecommunications industry The telecommunications industries within the sector of information and communication technology is made up of all telecommunications/telephone companies and internet service providers and plays a crucial role in the evolution of mobile communicati ...

{{cite web, url=http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11284640.htm, title=Global Mobile Value Added Services (VAS) Market: Worldwide Industry Share, Investment Trends, Growth, Size, Strategy And Forecast Research Report 2013, date=3 November 2013, work=PRWeb term for non- core services, or, in short, all services beyond standard voice calls and

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

transmissions. However, it can be used in any service industry, for services available at little or no cost, to promote their primary business. In the telecommunications industry, on a conceptual level, value-added services ''add value'' to the standard service offering, spurring subscribers to use their phone more and allowing the operator to drive up their

average revenue per user Average revenue per user (ARPU), sometimes known as average revenue per unit, is a measure used primarily by consumer communications, digital media, and networking companies, defined as the total revenue divided by the number of subscribers. The t ...

. For mobile phones, technologies like SMS, MMS and

data access Data access is a generic term referring to a process which has both an IT-specific meaning and other connotations involving access rights in a broader legal and/or political sense. In the former it typically refers to software and activities relat ...

were historically usually considered value-added services, but in recent years SMS, MMS and data access have more and more become core services, and VAS therefore has begun to exclude those services. Mobile VAS services can be categorized into: * Consumer behavior VAS * Network VAS * Enterprise VAS A distinction may also be made between standard (

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

) content and premium-charged content. These are called mobile value-added services (MVAS), which are often simply referred to as VAS. Value-added services are supplied either in-house by the mobile network operator themselves or by a third-party value-added service provider, also known as a content provider such as

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Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was esta ...

. Value-added service providers typically connect to the operator using protocols like Short message peer-to-peer protocol, connecting either directly to the short message service centre or, increasingly, to a messaging gateway that gives the operator better control of the content. Several other operators are approaching banking on possible revenue streams by building value-added services (VAS), which is generally available with rewards-based schemes.

Major value-added services

* Live streaming *

Location-based service A location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, en ...

s * Missed call alerts and

voicemail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...

box *

Mobile advertising Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mo ...

* Mobile money and

M-commerce The term mobile commerce was originally coined in 1997 by Kevin Duffey at the launch of the Global Mobile Commerce Forum, to mean "the delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere, via wireless techno ...

based services * Mobile TV and OTT services * Ring tones * Online gaming *

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(RBT and RRBT) * SMS chatting and dating premium services * Infotainment services *

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* WAP content downloads * Hello tune service

References

Telecommunication services