BiP offers operators the chance to upgrade their digital services and compete with global OTT players

Turkcell’s BiP has been one of the most successful OTT messaging apps to be developed by a telecoms operator. It was launched in 2013 in Turkey and reached a user base of 10 million monthly active users (MAUs) by the end of 2020, mostly in Turkey and Ukraine. BiP registered unprecedented growth in its number of users between January and February 2021, following an announcement of changes to WhatsApp’s terms and conditions. Indeed, the BiP app was downloaded 70 million times worldwide (from the Caribbean to emerging Asia–Pacific) during the first weeks of January 2021, thereby tripling the number of MAUs. In this article, we analyse why BiP experienced such a surge in popularity and identify its strength as a consumer messaging proposition and a white-label service for communication service providers (CSPs).