[asterisk-users] Re: Sending SMS

[Steve Totaro]

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2007, Al Bochter wrote:
>
>> I don't see why the cost to send SMS is around .15 each. What does 
>> the gateway know that I don't know about sending the SMS.
>> I just think .15 for each SMS send is high.  Or am I just over 
>> looking something?
>
> You're missing nothing; The telcos have us by the short & curlys. For 
> them, it's money for old rope. They probably (in the UK at least) make 
> many times more money through TXT messages than voice. The "base rate" 
> here is about 12p a message. 12p for 160 bytes, or a single data 
> packet over their network - which would be over £700 per MB. There are 
> now "bolt ons" or additional packages depending on the network you're 
> with - eg. with my contract I get up to 500 "free" TXTs a month. I 
> know some people who send dozens a day here. (Especially young people 
> - I think most 10 year olds now have mobile phones!).
>
> It's scandalous, but no-one challenged it when they first anounced it 
> because we all thought it was fantastic! The best thing they ever did 
> was for the 4 networks (in the UK) to agree to pass TXT messages 
> between each other. That was some 6 or 7 years ago, maybe more, and 
> that's when it really took off big time in the UK.
>
> I doubt it'll ever change because "that's the way it's always been", 
> and no-one is going to challenge them in a serious fashion. (And 
> no-one else can afford to build up a network to make it possible!)
>
> I've not really looked into the TXT sending business via landline in 
> the UK, but I think it's basically a call to an 09xxx number - which 
> are premium rate numbers, charging up to £1.50 a minute. Lets hope the 
> 160 byte packet gets sent in less than a minute!
>
> The stats. are amazing too.  I looked at wholesale connection last 
> year for a project. They had rates of up to a million messages a 
> month. (do the sums and workout how many miuntes there are in a month...)
>
> A quick search shows that in 2004, we in the UK were seding over 20 
> billion TXT messages a year - Thats 75 million a day. Not bad for a 
> population of 65 million... Who knows what the rate is today...
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/22/uk_text_message_volumes_break/
>
> Ah, that was 2004. Looks like we're almost doing that per month:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/26/uk_sms_record/
>
> 3.3 billion texts sent in May 2006...
>
> Gordon
Text messaging is not that big in the US for some reason.  Well anyways, 
on my T-Mobile phone, I have an unlimited text message package that cost 
$15/mo.  I am not sure how many constitutes "unlimited" though, I have 
not read the small print.

Thanks,
Steve