I work for a telco and I can tell you that sms is by far the highest profit margin product we have. It's not going away either, even with the smartphone revolution. Just like fax machines can't seem to die, sms is going to be the simplest, surest way to get a message to a cell phone for a while to come.
Baz On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Ikai L (Google) <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not stating that SMS delivery isn't cheap. It is. Someone along the way > between users and your application - either SMS gateway providers or telcos > or both - are making huge profits. Just because a service is inexpensive to > provide doesn't mean anyone has to provide the service for cheap. > > I'll admit it's been a while since I've worked with SMS gateways. If you > have a provider that will do SMS shortcodes for cheap prices, please feel > free to link them. Last time I worked with short code providers, they wanted > a setup fee in the thousands, took 2 months to deliver, then charged a few > cents for each outgoing and incoming SMS. > > > On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:29 AM, djidjadji <[email protected]> wrote: > >> And if you know that SMS traffic does not cost any bandwidth for the >> provider it should be as cheap as email. >> SMS messages are transmitted over the network in the slots used for >> network management. When there are no management messages to be send. >> That is the reason they are limited in length, these slots are fixed >> size. >> >> 2010/5/17 Ikai L (Google) <[email protected]>: >> > I worked with SMS (outgoing and incoming) a few years ago. 3 cents is, >> > believe it or not, the ballpark going rate (it was 5-10 cents then). You >> can >> > negotiate a bulk deal with various SMS gateways if you're big, but it's >> > never going to be as cheap as email. The silver lining is that it >> prevents >> > SMS spam, since it costs too much to do it. >> > >> > On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 8:26 AM, GAEfan <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> >> Thanks, guys. 3 cents per message does not sound like much, but it is >> >> not scalable. >> >> >> >> I set this up sending SMS via email. A couple of warnings for >> >> everyone: >> >> >> >> 1) AT&T does not auto-truncate the message to 160 characters, so you >> >> must write a script to do that. If you don't, AT&T breaks it up into >> >> multiple messages, and the receiver will get billed for 20 cents per >> >> each 160 chars. >> >> 2) When sending via email, EVERYTHING counts in the 160 characters: >> >> your FROM address (HINT: get a new admin address with a single >> >> letter), the recipients address (22 chars right there), SUBJECT, BODY, >> >> and the header labels (FRM:, SUBJ:, MSG:), plus another 8 or 9 >> >> characters (maybe the date or the fake number GAE sends from). So, >> >> you end up with A LOT less than 160 chars to send in the body. >> >> >> >> Here is my script: >> >> >> >> chars_available = 160 - 39 - len(subject) - len(to) # the 39 is for >> >> the length of the sender address, header labels, etc. >> >> if chars_available < 0: >> >> chars_available = 0 >> >> message = mail.EmailMessage( >> >> sender = "[email protected]", # shorten your from address. This >> >> requires a new GAE admin acccount >> >> subject = subject, >> >> body = body[:chars_available], >> >> to = to >> >> ) >> >> >> >> Would love to see a true SMS feature in GAE! >> >> >> >> -- >> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups >> >> "Google App Engine" group. >> >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> . >> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> >> [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> >> . >> >> For more options, visit this group at >> >> http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. >> >> >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Ikai Lan >> > Developer Relations, Google App Engine >> > Twitter: http://twitter.com/ikai >> > Delicious: http://delicious.com/ikailan >> > ---------------- >> > Google App Engine links: >> > Blog: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com >> > Twitter: http://twitter.com/app_engine >> > Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups >> > "Google App Engine" group. >> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> > [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> >> . >> > For more options, visit this group at >> > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. >> > >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Google App Engine" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> >> . >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. >> >> > > > -- > Ikai Lan > Developer Relations, Google App Engine > Twitter: http://twitter.com/ikai > Delicious: http://delicious.com/ikailan > > ---------------- > Google App Engine links: > Blog: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com > Twitter: http://twitter.com/app_engine > Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
