Sprint moves to new billing platform and allows binary content

As of January 31st, Sprint is moving all premium billing services to a new billing platform. There is no change for content providers. Consumers will no longer receive messages from short codes that have the price point appended to the code. All messages received by consumers, regardless of price point, will show up with the 5 digit short code and are fully reply-able.

Also, as of today, Sprint will allow binary content (ringtones, wallpapers, games) to be delivered to Sprint handsets and billed through Premium SMS. This means that binary content is now fully supported on Cingular, Tmobile, and Sprint, creating a market of 90 Mio subscribers. It is expected that Verizon will support binary content by the end of Q1 2006, further increasing the market size to over 135 Mio subscribers, or close to 70% of all mobile users in the US.