Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Neustar Policy Change

You used to be able to squeeze an extra month or so out of the normal short code rental period by renewing after the official expiration date. No later. Neustar has changed its policy and will now start the new renewal period from the expiration date regardless of when you actually renew the short code.

Example:
Expiration date: November 1, 2005
Code Renewal date: December 1, 2005
New Renewal Period starts November 1, 2005

Under the old policy the new renewal period would start on December 1st, saving you 1 month of short code costs.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Sprint implements Multi-tariff Short Codes

Sprint now supports multiple price points on the same short code. Their implementation is based on 'extending' the 5 digit short code with 3 digits which will signal the price. Example: A service operating with short code 33333, billed at $1.99 and at $2.99 will be visible to the consumer as short code 33333199 and 33333299 respectively.

Quios customers need not worry about extending the short code since Quios will strip the price from the MO messages or add the price to the MT messages, and hence the implementation will be transparent for our customers.

Friday, November 11, 2005

Tmobile and Operator Chat

Tmobile announced that they will aggressively crack down on non-authorized operator chat applications by the end of the year. Following guidelines will need to be strictly adhered to:
  • Absolutely no adult content allowed.
  • Operator chat with live operator is ok, with automated/bot replies is not ok.
  • Monthly spending caps need to be respected.
Tmobile plans on auditing all existing chat services towards the end of the year to verify compliance with the playbook and with the MMA guidelines (BTW, the 18+ requirement was dropped based on feedback from Tmobile's counsel).

From Tmobile's perspective, the content provider and aggregator are on the hook for any damages due to unauthorized adult content being distributed on their network.

Another playbook update is expected in early Q1. No news what changes will be included.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Carriers Adopt Content Guidelines

CTIA, the association of wireless carriers, today announced Wireless Content Guidelines, a voluntary pledge by the carriers to provide tools and controls to manage access to wireless content.

Content will be divided in 2 broad categories: (i) Generally Accessible Carrier Content; and (ii) Restricted Carrier Content. The content categorization guidelines will be developed by a carrier-independent 3rd party. Carriers pledge not to provide any Restricted Carrier Content until sufficient tools and controls are in place to restrict content to 18+ year old consumers.

While there is no specific announcement on timelines or applicability to Premium SMS, it is generally understood that this opens the door to offering adult services and bill for them through Premium SMS as soon as parental controls are in place.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Carrier Freeze Notification

Many carriers freeze any network changes around the end of year to be able to deal with increased year-end volumes, and reduced staff. This will delay the provisioning of short codes. Please take this into account if you plan on launching new short code services towards the end of the year or the beginning of next year.

The carrier announced freeze dates are :
Alltel: 12/19 - 1/1
Cingular: 11/22 - 11/27 and 12/22 - 1/1
Dobson: none
Sprint/Nextel/Boost: 11/21 - 11/25 and 12/21 - 1/1
T-Mobile: none
Verizon: none

We will continue to process any new campaign orders and submit them to the carriers during that period.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Cingular Subscription changes

Details about Cingular's subscription changes are starting to trickle in. Key elements are :

1. Only monthly subscriptions will be allowed. Previously, this restriction only applied to binary campaigns (ringtones, etc.) but will now be extended to ALL campaigns (including text alerts, horoscopes, etc). This means that you can no longer provide daily subscription services such as daily horoscopes charged on a per horoscope basis.

2. Subscription and refund management will be handled by Cingular. Consumer will be able to stop subscription billing by replying STOP, but also by calling the Cingular call center. As a result, content providers will be forced to implement various new procedures to deal with the case of the consumer calling Cingular to stop the subscription billing. This will require API changes.

Cingular wants all changes to be implemented and live by December 1, 2005.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Cingular Announces Subscription Changes

Cingular announced that they plan on taking control of subscription billing through Premium SMS. Currently, content providers are generating their own Premium Billed SMS messages and are responsible for handling opt-in, opt-out, auto-renewal, etc. in line with the Cingular customer experience policy document.

As of December 1st, Cingular plans to launch a new subscription management mechanism to handle these tasks. In addition to texting, a consumer will be able to opt-out of any subscription service by calling Cingular's call centre.

Details of how this is going to work and what impact this will have on the content provider's applications, are unclear.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Tmobile binary subscription changes

Tmobile now requires all content providers to report monthly, on a per short code basis, how many binary subscriptions they have, and how many content downloads were completed. Tmobile reservers the right to audit these numbers and shut down short codes should there be any discrepencies.

Tmobile is normally charging $0.50 per WAP Push message. However, they will not charge this amount as long as the number of WAP Push messages sent per month per subscriber is lower than 'Premium Price' divided by 0.05. Example: a monthly subscription is offered at $0.30. The max. nbr. of content download messages allowed is $0.30 / 0.05 = 6 messages.

In order to avoid abuse, Tmobile now requires all content providers to report the number of content downloads to ensure that the number of content downloads per premium transaction falls below the maximum.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Tmobile will start allowing Off-portal games

At the CTIA Mecca conference, Tmobile announced that they will gradually start allowing off-portal sales of Java games. However, individual games will have to be certified by Tmobile to work on their network before they can be sold through Premium SMS.

No time frame on when this will be happen.

CTIA New Statistics

San Francisco, Sep 26, 2005: CTIA announced new statistics that show continued heavy growth of SMS and Data in the US:
  • 196 million consumers now own a cell phone
  • 1/3 of them (roughly 63 million consumers) are actively using data services
  • In August 2005, 7.2 Billion text messages were sent across US carriers
  • Data revenue now accounts for roughly 8% of carrier revenues

Monday, September 19, 2005

SMS Usage Study - Part 2

A survey by Yankee Group earlier this year amongst 5,200 adults found similar results to the study mentioned here earlier by PlanetJam Media Group:
  • 62% of 18-24 year olds are regular text message users
  • 33% of 25-34 year old
  • 25% of 35-44 year old
Forrester research estimates that revenues from text messaging will grow to $4.3 billion by 2006, up from $2.5 billion in 2004.

CTIA estimates that US consumers sent 37 billion text messages in 2004, or 203 messages per user on average. In December 2004, a total of 4.7 billion text messages were sent.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

SMS Usage Study

PlanetJam Media Group has announced the results of its RESPONSEbase study on Text Messaging usage. Very interesting! Bottom line is that text messaging is rapidly becoming a standard communication tool for the young demo. Here are the detailed results:

For the 18-24 year old cell
  • 64% text message via their cell phones at least twice per month
  • 24% text message several times per day
  • 33% send or receive in excess of 100 text messages per month
  • Of those that text message, 83% of received messages are from friends with only .5% being from advertisers.
For the 25-35 year old cell
  • 42% text message via their cell phones at least twice per month
  • 12% text message several times per day
  • 7% send or receive in excess of 100 text messages per month
  • Of those that text message, 64% of received messages are from friends, 30% from family, and 2% from advertisers
For the 36-54 year old cell
  • 19% text message via their cell phones at least twice per month
  • 3% text message several times per day
  • 1% send or receive in excess of 100 text messages per month
  • Of those that text message, 36% of received messages are from friends, 50% from family, 7% from coworkers, and 6% from advertisers

Monday, September 12, 2005

SMS and Adult Content

It is common knowledge that the Adult industry is thriving on the web. What may be surprising to some is that the same Adult industry is also generating significant revenues from mobile services, mainly in Europe, where adult services such as chat, adult content downloads, and now increasingly video downloads and streaming are booming. Many of the European carriers have set up separate 'adult only' short codes and are putting in place strict age verification mechanisms to prevent minors from getting access to these services.

So, how about the US ?

The short answer is simple: none of the US carriers allow adult services on their networks. This means:
- No adult content of any sort.
- No adult advertising of any sort.
- No advertising in 'adult context'.

It is very important to understand that carriers enforce a strict zero-tolerance policy. This means that if you are caught violating any of these standards, your short code will be terminated without warning.

Two of our customers recently experienced the carrier's wrath and saw their short codes terminated:
- Carrier A cancelled a short code after discovering that some of the chat content contained language of adult nature. Because the service was an operator chat service, the carrier held the customer responsible for such content and terminated the short code.
- Carrier B cancelled a short code after discovering that the chat service was being promoted as an adult service. The company's web site contained banners saying 'adult chat' and 'hot steamy gay chat'. Even though the actual content of the chat service proved to be innocent, the short code was terminated.

What's next for adult on cell phones ?

The key reason for the carrier's zero tolerance policy is the fact that there is no good way for carriers to validate the age of the consumer. Carriers and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) are discussing ways to implement an age verification system to allow adult services to be offered to consumers. Expect more on this topic early next year.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Cingular Orange/Blue PSMS changes

Cingular and Cingular Blue (formerly AT&T) announced today that all MT messages that respond to an opt-out request or HELP request need to be ZERO-RATED. This is different from 'Standard Rated'. A 'Standard Rated' message will be billed to the consumer at the standard message rate, while a 'Zero Rated' message will not be charged at all.

As usual, timeframe for implementation is very short. Cingular wants this to be in place on all PSMS campaigns by this Friday June 24, COB.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

PSMS Outpayment changes

Cingular Blue (formerly AT&T Wireless) abolished its distinction in Premium SMS outpayment rates between subscription and single purchase programs. This had to happen sooner or later because the current system made no sense. Certain short codes supported both subscription and single purchase services making it highly confusing to try and figure out what the outpayments should be in such a case.

Sprint PCS has improved its outpayments for tariffs below 50 cents and decreased outpayments on tariffs above $1.25

Friday, May 27, 2005

Cingular posts 'American Idol' texting results

In a press statement released yesterday, Cingular Wireless disclosed summary statistics of the text messaging participation rates during American Idol Season 4 . 41.5 million text messages were 'recorded' during the entire season. Only Cingular subscribers (5o million) were able to participate.

Let's play around with these figures:
  • Each epsiode must have generated around 3.5 million votes. With each episode attracting around 2o million viewers, this means that 17% of viewers participated in text message voting. Hmm, that seems unlikely, especially because Cingular only has a market share of around 27%. It would indicate that 65% of all Cingular subscribers watching American Idol actually sent a text message. Probably Cingular counted all messages (both Mobile Originated and Mobile Terminated). So, if each vote generates a 'thank you' message, the actual number of votes is probably only 1.75 million, instead of 3.5 million.
  • If the votes are spread equally over 3 hours, average traffic was around 350 sms/sec, peak traffic probably closer to twice that mount (700 sms/sec)
  • If all carriers had participated, the total number of text messages could have been 154 million, representing 72 million votes (assuming each MO generates a 'thank you' MT)
  • If Fox would have offered this service as a premium SMS service, charging a voter 50c per vote, the gross revenue could have been $38 million, or $3.2 million per episode, which would probably take care of the entire production budget...