BulkSMS wants interconnect charges for messaging
South African networks should introduce interconnect charges for SMS without increasing the current pricing structure, says Pieter Streicher, Managing Director of BulkSMS.com, leading messaging service provider in South Africa and worldwide.
Streicher feels that South African networks should not only introduce interconnect charges between cellular operators, still a controversial national debate, but the same thing can be done for SMS, without increasing pricing in SMS messaging. His statement is based on consumer protection against spam originating outside home networks, plus a healthier competition in the messaging industry.
“Currently, the SA network operators do not charge any interconnect fees for SMS locally and do not charge interconnect fees for SMS originating from many foreign networks. In the early days of GSM networks, no-one anticipated how popular SMS would become. The operators thought that messaging would only be used to notify cellphone users of voicemails”, argues Streicher, pleading for a formal interconnect agreement among operators.
SMS interconnect fees were successfully introduced in 2003 in UK because of SMS span problems, forcing messaging services to send via official channels. “Whenever communication is available at a low cost for commercial purposes, there is a higher risk of abuse as has been seen with email. Cellphone users are even more vulnerable as it is much easier for scamsters to spam a sequential combination of numbers, rather than a combination of letters for an email address”, he claims.
BulkSMS.com is a leading SMS messaging service provider offering two-way SMS communication services to over 700 mobile network operators worldwide.
Interconnect charges are going to be applicable in India. But this is going to effect a lot of companies doing the promotion on Bulk SMS services
It’s not only gonna effect the companies which are running promotion through this but also the companies which are in this business.
Although Interconnect charges may apply but bulk sms will still remain the cheapest & one of the best mode of marketing.