TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Re: Young Cell Users Rack Up Debt, One Dime Message at a Time

Re: Re: Young Cell Users Rack Up Debt, One Dime Message at a Time

Chris Kantarjiev (cak@dimebank.com)
Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:49:12 PST

> It was entirely possible to enable SMS between carriers without having
> to have a third party involved. But they insinuated themselves into
> the equation and now we all pay.

Well, no. I don't want to defend Verisign, but ... I was there at the
beginning of US inter-carrier SMS, as a solution provider (not too
successful, for various reasons). The carriers were *not* able to
manage this on their own, because they barely understood SMS (among
other reasons). The connections were managed on a per-carrier-pair
basis for quite a while. Many of the connections were done with SMTP
or SMPP over IP, outside the SS7 network.

One company ended up winning most of these contracts and they were
ultimately bought by Verisign (which is becoming the Cisco of telecom
technology -- they recently bought the remains of the Unimobile SMS
messaging network, too).

The fact that they charge the carrier has little to do with the
recipient being charged. The *sender* is already being charged. The
recipient gets charged, too -- even if the message doesn't transit a
carrier boundary. This is double-dipping, pure and simple.

US carriers really don't understand SMS or why it's interesting. The
pricing structures don't provide any benefit for using SMS -- buckets
of minutes for a flat fee mean that voice calls are "free" but SMS
messages aren't, even though SMS messages provide more interesting
usability options.

What I'd really like to see is a carrier plan where an SMS message
costs me a voice minute from my bucket of minutes. I *never* use all
my voice minutes, but I send a lot of SMS messages (my AT&T plan
doesn't yet charge me for those I receive). SMS messages cost the
carrier less bandwidth -- but they don't seem to care to pass this
savings on to their customers.

Best,

chris

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