ICE Barcelona rarely lacks noise, but beneath the constant discussions among iGaming executives, vendors, and operators, a more structural concern emerged this year: communication reliability, wasted spend, and the growing gap between message volume and message value.
Against that backdrop, Communications Hub has been quietly positioning itself as a different kind of player in the SMS, flash calls, and messenger space, focusing less on raw delivery volume and more on the decision-making layer that determines whether a message should ever be sent in the first place.
We sat down with Bohdan Bulatsan, CTO of Communications Hub, to discuss why “delivery” alone is no longer enough, and how smarter decisions before a message is sent are reshaping how iGaming businesses communicate with players.
Most platforms promise delivery. What does Communications Hub do before a message is sent that fundamentally changes whether it should be sent at all?
“Most platforms focus on what happens after you press “send.” We deliberately focus on what happens before that moment.
“At Communications Hub, every message goes through an automatic pre-send verification process. At the simplest level, this includes basic validation checks. At a more advanced level, we run HLR verification to confirm whether a phone number is actually active and registered on a mobile provider’s network.
“The key difference is that we don’t treat sending as a given. Based on these checks, the system makes a decision: does it make sense to send this message at all? If the answer is no, the message never leaves the platform. That single decision changes the entire economics and quality of communication because you’re no longer paying for attempts that were never going to work.”
You emphasise multi-level pre-send verification. Can you explain how this directly reduces wasted spend and improves communication quality without adding complexity for clients?
“The important point is that clients don’t have to manage this logic themselves; it’s built into the platform.
“During verification, Communications Hub automatically decides what should happen next with each message. For example, if a number hasn’t yet been registered in the provider’s network, there’s no commercial or technical value in sending an SMS and paying for that attempt. So the system stops it right there.
“Duplicate detection works the same way. If a message is identified as a repeat of a previous send, it’s blocked before it creates noise or unnecessary cost. From the client’s perspective, nothing becomes more complex. They still send messages as usual, but behind the scenes we’re filtering out waste and improving signal quality. The result is cleaner communication and direct savings on messaging budgets.”
Backup and cascading are often treated as “emergency features.” Why did you design them as a default part of everyday communication flows?
“Because in real-world systems, failure isn’t an exception; it’s normal.
“Mobile networks fail, providers have outages, routes degrade unexpectedly. Designing backup and cascading only for “emergencies” assumes that communication systems are stable most of the time. They’re not.
“Communications Hub is built on the assumption that something will go wrong somewhere. That’s why backup routing and automatic traffic switching are part of everyday message delivery, not a panic button. If there’s an issue on one provider’s side, the platform automatically redirects traffic to another provider without client intervention.
“For operators, this means campaigns don’t stall, critical messages don’t disappear and player communication stays uninterrupted, even when parts of the ecosystem fail.”
From a CTO’s point of view, what’s the hardest communication failure to detect and how does Communications Hub make sure it never turns into message loss for the client?
“One of the hardest failures to detect is fraud-related traffic, especially so-called “fraud numbers.” These are often numbers that don’t even exist but they look valid enough to pass standard validation checks. As a result, companies can end up spending significant budgets on messages that were never deliverable in the first place.
“This is where our HLR module plays a critical role. Before a campaign is sent, Communications Hub checks whether the target numbers are actually registered on the provider’s network. If they’re not, those messages are stopped immediately.
“That approach solves several problems at once: it prevents silent message loss, reduces fraud-related costs and protects the client’s overall messaging budget. From a CTO’s perspective, that’s the ideal outcome; a failure that never reaches production and never shows up as a financial surprise.”
Editor’s Conclusion:
As ICE Barcelona made clear, iGaming communication is no longer about sending more messages; it is about sending better ones. Rising acquisition costs, tighter margins and growing regulatory scrutiny are forcing operators to look more critically at every layer of their engagement stack, including the infrastructure that sits beneath marketing and CRM tools.
Communications Hub’s philosophy reflects that shift: verify first, route intelligently and design systems around the assumption that failure will occur. In practice, this moves messaging from a simple delivery function to an optimisation layer that directly impacts cost control, player experience and operational resilience.
In an industry where timing, trust and efficiency increasingly define competitive advantage, platforms that help operators decide whether to send, not just how to send, may become just as important as the channels themselves.
