A value-added service (VAS) is a popular

telecommunications industry The telecommunications industry within the sector of information and communication technology comprises all telecommunication/ telephone companies and Internet service providers, and plays a crucial role in the evolution of mobile communications ...

{{cite web, url=https://www.prweb.com/releases/global_mobile_value_added_services_vas_market_worldwide_industry_share_investment_trends_growth_size_strategy_and_forecast_research_report_2013/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 call A telephone call, phone call, voice call, or simply a call, is the effective use of a connection over a telephone network between the calling party and the called party. Telephone calls are the form of human communication that was first enab ...

s and

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

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 ...

. For mobile phones, technologies like

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

, 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, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

) 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 A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

themselves or by a third-party value-added service provider, also known as a content provider such as

All Headline News All Headline News (AHN) was a United States–based news agency or wire service. It was founded in 2000 by W. Jeffrey Brown as an internet news search engine. It grew to become a major worldwide online newswire service, providing news and other c ...

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

. 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 Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known ...

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 Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming media, streaming of video or Digital audio, audio in real-time communication, real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature ...

Location-based service Location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software service (economics), 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 ...

s *

Missed call A missed call is a telephone call that is deliberately terminated by the caller before being answered by its intended recipient, in order to communicate a pre-agreed message. It is a form of One-bit message, one-bit messaging. Missed calls wer ...

alerts and

voicemail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows callers to leave a recorded message when the recipient has been unable (or unwilling) to answer the phone. Calls may be directed to voicemail m ...

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 ...

Mobile money Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cas ...

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 *

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s * Online gaming *

Ringback tone Ringing tone (audible ringing, also ringback tone) is a signaling tone in telecommunication that is heard by the originator of a telephone call while the destination terminal is alerting the receiving party. The tone is typically a repeated cade ...

(RBT and RRBT) *

chatting and dating premium services *

Infotainment Infotainment (a portmanteau of ''information'' and ''entertainment''), also called soft news as a way to distinguish it from serious journalism or hard news, is a type of media, usually television or online, that provides a combination of inform ...

services *

Stickering Sticker art (also known as slaps in a graffiti context) is a form of street art in which an image or message is publicly displayed using stickers. These stickers may promote a political agenda, comment on a policy or issue, or comprise a subcatego ...

* WAP content downloads * Hello tune service

References

Telecommunication services