AT&T’s proposed “OPPC” initiative (Off-Portal Purchase Controls) has become one of the hottest discussion topics in the U.S mobile content industry as it represents a paradigm shift in the traditional model for Premium SMS billing. In the traditional model, certified operators such as GoLive! Mobile, Motricity, Mblox, and others have been able to directly initiate a Premium SMS billing event and essentially charge an end-user on his cell phone bill for mobile content.
In the OPPC model, AT&T’s acts as a billing proxy sitting between us and the wireless subscriber. Therefore, to bill an AT&T end-user under the OPPC model you send a query to AT&T who then sends an Advice of Charge message to the end-user, waits for the double opt-in response, and then notifies us upon successful double opt-in.
In other words, AT&T will be directly handling the double opt-in of subscribers for Premium SMS billing.
While OPPC implementation is a 200-page nightmare from a technical perspective, it offers significant insulation to the end-user from premium SMS scams and fraudulent activity, and in that regard should be looked at very positively.
That said, I’m left scratching my head as to why the carriers don’t simply institute MO billing like most European countries have – this would instantly wipe out 99% of the Premium SMS fraud activity.
Posted by Asher Delug 
