Value-added Service

A value-added service (VAS) is popular as a telecommunications industry term for non-core services, or in short, all services beyond standard voice calls and fax 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 telecommunication industry, on a conceptual level, value-added services add value to the standard service offering, spurring the subscriber to use their phone more and allowing the operator to drive up their ARPU. For mobile phones, while technologies like SMS, MMS and data access 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 beginning to exclude those services.

A distinction may also be made between standard (peer-to-peer) content and premium-charged content. These are called mobile value-added services (MVAS) which are often simply referred 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 (VASP), also known as a content provider (CP) such as All Headline News or Reuters.

VASPs typically connect to the operator using protocols like Short message peer-to-peer protocol (SMPP), connecting either directly to the short message service centre (SMSC) or, increasingly, to a messaging gateway that gives the operator better control of the content.