AIT (Artificially Inflated Traffic)

Also known as: Artificially Inflated Traffic, SMS AIT

AIT is traffic generated with the primary purpose of producing termination revenue rather than delivering a genuine communication. In A2P SMS it is often called SMS pumping: bots trigger OTP flows on public sign-up or password-reset forms to force the sender to pay for messages routed to high-cost ranges. AIT is closely related to IRSF on the voice side and is countered with rate limiting, destination hot-lists and CAPTCHA on trigger surfaces.

Categories: FraudOperations and BusinessInternet and Routing

AIT in context

Telecom fraud costs operators an estimated $40+ billion per year. Common vectors include IRSF, Wangiri callback scams, SIM box bypass, PBX hacking and A2P grey routing.

OSS/BSS platforms hold the highest-value subscriber and revenue data on the operator side, are heavily targeted for fraud and insider abuse, and are in scope for NIS2 and the UK Telecoms Security Act.

To place AIT in the wider telecom-security picture, review OTT Bypass, 3GPP, Billing System, BSS, DSLAM and Flash Call Fraud — each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

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