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.
Monday, October 31, 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.
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.
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.
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