RFP# LRPS-2024-9193238 "Establishing Long Term Arrangement (LTA) for SMS Aggregator Services by facilitating and promoting SMS services used for U-Report, other sections and GoB counterpart of differe

TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR INSTITUTIONAL CONTRACT

 

Title

Mobile Gateway Hosting # SMS Aggregator Services

Purpose

Establishing Long Term Arrangement (LTA) for SMS Aggregator Services by facilitating and promoting SMS services used for U-Report, other sections and GoB counterpart of different sections.

Location

Entire Bangladesh

Estimated Duration of LTA

36 months;

 

Reporting to Technical Supervisor of this assignment

Enter the name, designation and section.

1. Technical lead: Abrehet Mohammed Omer, Chief ICT/T4D will provide overall technical guidance and quality monitoring
2. Management lead: Monjur Hossain Khan, ICT officer focal will manage the administrative issues of the contract.

 

1. Background

UNICEF is has been using an interactive digital system, using mobile phones to facilitate citizens' access to the organization’s services, especially in remote and disadvantaged areas, as well as low-income families. The system will also support data collection to measure performance indicators and citizens' satisfaction with those services. These programmes all involve sending and receiving SMS from identified target groups (adolescents, village health teams, headmasters, school teachers, youth leaders, the general public, etc.) using free-to-the-user dedicated short code numbers.  The system is based on UNICEF’s open-source RapidPro platform.

 

2. Objectives, Purpose and Expected Results

This service will allow to develop a Realtime communication loop with adolescent / youth, community leaders and other stakeholders. This service along with the system will enhance capacity of the UNICEF and its counterpart to interact with respective service recipient, provide important information and received community feedback.

 

The service will facilitate to establish UNICEF’s goals of equity in access to services by all, specially to marginalized section of the society. 

 

3. Description of Assignment

 

In order to make the platform accessible to all young people, we need them to be able to connect to the RapidPro platform via a free to use short code (16629) that is appropriate for and activated on all telecom networks (Grameen Phone, Robi, Banglalink and other new service provider as it emerges) in Bangladesh.  Key to UNICEF’s goals of equity in access to services, all SMS’s which are sent to the dedicated short code number shall not be charged to the end user (the short code number must be reverse billed to all users of the short code or connected to free ports of MNOs); UNICEF will meet the cost of the inbound and outbound SMS’s. SMS traffic for the short code will be routed through the company’s existing SMPP interconnections with the operators and forwarded to UNICEF RapidPro servers. The Company will then receive SMS from the designated UNICEF RapidPro servers and terminate these SMS to the mobile subscribers on all telecom networks. The service provider must provide following services.

 

1. Activate, manage and maintain reverse billed SMS short codes on behalf of UNICEF, including providing a single REST API or SMSC connection that UNICEF will use to interface with the UNICEF managed RapidPro web-based application.
   1. If a REST API connection is provided, the vendor should include full documentation about their public API which includes authentication methods, input parameters and output format for each endpoint; A test phone number provided by aggregator; Access to a test account on the aggregator console to enable developers to validate the integration when developing; Contacts from aggregator to resolve any technical issues during integration;
   2. If a SMSC connection is provided, the vendor should include full documentation necessary to connect to the aggregator VPN, send and receive messages through its services; a VPN form; and SMSC credentials.
2. Provide needed incoming and outgoing messaging services to all users via the respective mobile networks in Bangladesh.
3. In the financial proposal, include a mechanism within the billing structure to cater for SMS costs in the event UNICEF is able to directly negotiate bulk SMS rates below those currently being offered by the MNO’s to the vendor.
4. Enable reachability of all mobile networks in Bangladesh to the U-Report shortcode 16629
5. Provide incoming and outgoing SMS services for toll-free short code licensed to UNICEF, relevant services and an appropriate billing system.
6. A scalable Bulk SMS pricing model to provided, included tiered pricing based on volumes of inbound/outbound SMS.
7. Provide technical support and troubleshooting to maintain and manage the above-mentioned system.
8. Ensure Shortcode SMS charges are paid to the Mobile Operators in the case of paid SMS service, the vendor needs to share the proof of payment made to the Mobile Operators against the SMS charges.

 

 

4. Deliverables & Reporting requirements

 

S. No.

Task/service

Expected reporting requirements

Expected output

1

Technical support to facilitate the integration of REST API / SMSC with RapidPro (mobile service engine/ application)

Daily and weekly updates through the integration process to ensure quick turn-around time on connection between the REST API / SMSC connection and

 

 

RapidPro for all designated short codes

Integration of SMSC and RapidPro for designated short codes

2

Provide incoming and outgoing SMS services for reverse billed SMS  short code licensed to UNICEF, relevant services and an appropriate billing system.

Monthly inbound and outbound traffic reports, including, successful vs. failed messages, up / downtime of services and gateways and

failure response mechanisms.

 

Documentation of details of used technology and connectivity, any routing / hubs involved in the offered SMS services for all networks.

 

The Company shall specify the guaranteed uptime of its SMS gateway servers and report any faults to UNICEF without delay.

 

The Company shall provide alerts of when there are technical faults with telecoms once the fault has lasted more than 5 minutes.

The Company will report any faults to UNICEF without delay.

The Company will manage relationships with the telephone networks to fix tech faults and billing discrepancies.

 

 

Details of used technology and connectivity, any routing / hubs involved in the offered SMS services for all networks, outage / failure alert system.

 

specifications, SMS queuing information and access, guaranteed system uptime, failure and outage response mechanisms and alert systems (including description and alert mechanism for all involved hubs up to the networks).

 

A proof of concept that guaranteed and specified minimum messages / SMS throughput per second, technical background and setup.

3

A scalable bulk SMS pricing model, included tiered pricing based on volumes of inbound/outbound SMS

A tiered pricing model based on monthly volumes of outbound and inbound SMS.

(Price quote for the bulk price need to be provided tiered pricing model based on monthly volume of outbound and inbound SMS)

A tiered pricing model based on monthly volumes of outbound and inbound SMS.

 

4

Service Level Agreement (SLA), including a tool that both UNICEF and the vendor will use to monitor up / down time of connections, and a clearly defined process for escalation and resolution with the MNOs. 

• SLA and monitoring tool

SLA and monitoring tool

5

Provide incoming and outgoing SMS services for toll-free short codes licensed to UNICEF, relevant services and an appropriate billing system(reverse billing).

• Monthly inbound and outbound traffic reports, including separate data per short code, successful vs. failed messages, up / downtime of services and gateways and failure response mechanisms.

 

6

Vendor to pay the License renewal fee and any other applicable fee to BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) for the UNICEF Shortcode 16629 on behalf of UNICEF

• The Shortcode license gets updated; License renewal fee and other applicable fee paid to BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission)  by the vendor will be reimbursed to them.

Yearly basis

 

 

5. Reporting requirements

 

Described in above table under ‘Deliverables’.

 

6. Payment Schedule

 

Submission of monthly invoice containing followings.

1. Short code management service (hosting)
2. Bulk SMS service (UNICEF short code 16629) with breakdown against each Mobile Operators.

 

7. Qualification requirement of the company/institution/organization

 

• At least 2 years software development experience on real time SMS applications, and SMS content provision applications.
• The company should be registered and licensed to provide the selected Services;
• The company should have implemented or ongoing contracts of similar nature with organizations/ companies of similar magnitude and complexity.
• At least 2 years proven experience providing high quality hosting, maintenance and support for requested SMS services.
• Ability to link to all Mobile networks in Bangladesh.
• Ability to offer technical support 7 days a week.
• Vendor should be based in Bangladesh.
• Vendor prior work experience providing SMS aggregation services to the United Nations preferred.