The US Is Getting SMS?!?

[Carrie]

Was just cruising the parties page at Internext and happened upon this:
"US Cellnet information and One World Interactive invite you to join us for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to celebrate the launch of Premium SMS in the U.S."

WOOHOO!!
My next question is... WHEN?? Anyone know? (The SMS, not the party)

[JR]

i have had tri-band GSM phones that work in the States, Europe and Asia for years. there has been SMS here for a long time. its just not popular since every fucking phone company is competing to create their own standard rather than join what is undeniably a world standard already.

[Carrie]

Okay then I guess the question would be - are we finally getting a universal SMS system? It's not going to be used widely until there's some sort of a standard OR all the systems are able to tie-in with each other (like with atm cards and the different networks that all work together there)

[bluedesignstudios]

Originally posted by Carrie@Dec 30 2003, 05:22 PM
Okay then I guess the question would be - are we finally getting a universal SMS system? It's not going to be used widely until there's some sort of a standard OR all the systems are able to tie-in with each other (like with atm cards and the different networks that all work together there)

Yes a standard would be a good place to start, but unfortunatly the fundamentals of cell phone technology differs greatly from country to country / continent to continent - I don't see it happening any time soon.

having protocols that allow communications accross different network standards can be done, but it's a headfuck, fyi, 30% of the cost of a call on a cell phone is for the billing system, this increases dramatically when you start mixing networks, and is very inaccurate...

[Carrie]

I hereby anoint this thread "How to burst Carrie's bubble in two posts or less"

[sarah_webinc]

sms is so popular in the uk - especially with kids/teens - that we are seriously breeding a generation of kids with excessivly strong fingers but I bet there is a rise in cases of arthritis thirty years from now.

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by sarah_webinc@Dec 31 2003, 06:58 AM
sms is so popular in the uk - especially with kids/teens - that we are seriously breeding a generation of kids with excessivly strong fingers but I bet there is a rise in cases of arthritis thirty years from now.

Lol- a new market ergonomic cell phones! Lol

Damn it I want a cell phone that will play me music, show me pictures, process my credit cards and get me off.

[cj]

Originally posted by Dianna Vesta@Dec 31 2003, 08:55 AM
Damn it I want a cell phone that will play me music, show me pictures, process my credit cards and get me off.

mine does all of the above except the vibrating function isn't quite strong enough

now there's something you should invent Dianna

[Hell Puppy]

Originally posted by Carrie@Dec 30 2003, 08:22 PM
Okay then I guess the question would be - are we finally getting a universal SMS system? It's not going to be used widely until there's some sort of a standard OR all the systems are able to tie-in with each other (like with atm cards and the different networks that all work together there)

Uhm....this has been solved for about 2 years now....

Although the U.S. still has a mixture of GSM, CDMA and TDMA networks floating around out there, all of the large carriers are using solutions from people like Illuminet and Mobilespring to allow SMS to work between carriers.

I know this is true of 5 of the big 6. The big 6 are Verizon, T-mobile, Nextel, Cingular, Sprint and AT&T. Of those, the only one that doesn't play nice and talk with the others is Nextel....or at least they didn't the last time I checked, and that's been a while. Nextel does their own thing as their niche is really businesses who use their walkie-talkie functionality...so far they haven't delved into data service very much.

[Richard N. Bush]

Nextel fucking sucks, but that's another story...

[Lord Aga]

Hate to spam but we will have a US version of http://www.logopimp.com ready for Internext..

Will be credit card billing.. but i believe premium rate SMS will be turned on in Feb..

affiliate program is at http://www.cellphonebucks.com

If anyone wants a white ;abel ringtone site..or even a white label affiliate program.. give me a shout.. aga@netpond.com

[Biggy]

whats SMS..

i know it relates to cell phone, but what exactly is it, and the practical use..

[Carrie]

Originally posted by Biggy@Jan 2 2004, 07:25 AM
whats SMS..

i know it relates to cell phone, but what exactly is it, and the practical use..

SMS = Short Messaging Service
Practical uses are endless. You can do billing through it, which is the main appeal to the industry. A customer sends you (your gateway actually) a short text message, your gateway sends back a verification code, the customer uses that verification code to enter your site, and the gateway bills his cellphone.

It can be used for all kinds of stuff. Imagine you're at the beach with no change but you want a soda. With an SMS-enabled phone, you can send a certain text message to a particular number that you find on a soda machine. It sends back a code that you punch into the machine, and out pops a soda! Your cellphone bill gets charged the 75cents or whatever for the soda.

Single-girl sites, even mainstream sites like sport sites etc can mass-message their customers with updates, little dirty notes (okay so the sports site wouldn't do this), etc etc once the customer has sent a message to the gateway signing up for the service... all kinds of stuff.

And since the signup for whatever service/product comes directly from the phone, there's no saying "I didn't make this charge". Although I'm sure the friendly-fraud folks will find a way to get around this with excuses like "my kid did it" or something like that.

[TheEnforcer]

Hmmm... sounds like a very interesting tech.

[txtbill]

Just to answer the original question the US is not getting PSMS for the forceable future! The problem is not having a generic GSM network on which it is all based the US has not seen the type of growth in SMS usage like the UK and Europe.

My company is still working on our SMS Billing engine but hopefully we will be ready to launch soon.

Regards

Aaron Mc
txtBILL Ltd

www.txtbill.com

[Lord Aga]

Originally posted by txtbill@Jan 2 2004, 12:35 PM
Just to answer the original question the US is not getting PSMS for the forceable future! The problem is not having a generic GSM network on which it is all based the US has not seen the type of growth in SMS usage like the UK and Europe.

My company is still working on our SMS Billing engine but hopefully we will be ready to launch soon.

Regards

Aaron Mc
txtBILL Ltd

www.txtbill.com

If the US is notgetting PSMS soon..then someone better tell this crowd!

"Event: US Cellnet and One World Interactive Party
Time: 5:00p.m. - 7:30p.m.
Location: Palazzo Ballroom (next to V Bar)
Sponsored by: US Cellnet and One World Interactive

US Cellnet information and One World Interactive invite you to join us for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to celebrate the launch of Premium SMS in the U.S."

[Biggy]

Carrie,

thanks for the explanation.

For all you folks in UK and Europe who say this technology is big over there, can you give us Americans an actual use of it, in other words, what do you use SMS for and what have you used it for?

The way you explained it via the soda machine sounds amazing, but is it already out over there and people are using it???

I like it, and I don't like it at the same time.. it sounds great, but I feel like for the adult net, its opening a whole new can of worms due to children.

Take this scenario, kids these days are getting cell phones at 14, 15, etc. A boy wants to access a porn site, doesn't have a credit card, thats the end of it, yet now he can call up his cell phone, and get instant access???

Sounds like the technology is not perfected out there, and I don't know how much of a real use it will be for the adult net, at least in the US....

for other things, you are absolutely right, the possibilites are endless. Although, i don't know how cell phone companies in the US are going to fare, considering from what I gather everything gets billed to the cell phone, hence through your provider, and they may see big jumps in their bad debt expense..

[txtbill]

Lord Aga thanks for that seems I will have to get onto my gateway provider and see if there is any inroads with that. Although I did hear that they are testing PSMS with a small number of users in the US.

I cant see them rolling it out nationwide.

BTW great board guys.

Aaron

[sexpress]

Here in the land of Nokia SMS-billing is very common. Both online and offline.

[Naughty]

We're working very closely with UK companies to get SMS billing in the US, I've been pushing them for at least a year and just got word that it is almost finished.

May the fastest man win (and score KK for PR )

[PMdave]

biggi, premium sms is a cvery popular way to bill people that want acces to a (pay site)...
IE:Instead of pulling the creditcard they take the mobile phone send an sms to a premium number and get an sms back with their username/password. instead of the normal rate (whichis €0.15 here in belgium) they are being charged somwhere between 0.5 and a max of €2 for the sms (those are the rates for belgium don't know for other countries). The company that own the premium sms number gets a % from the mobile network.
It could also be used for subscriptions. So they send an sms once and receive 1-2 SMS each day at a premium rate untill they cancel their subscription.

[Petr]

the lack of age verification might be a problem, especially in the States. plus the telco's fees (around 50%). plus that there are incompatible SMS systems in the US (= you can't send a SMS message from one network to another).