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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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...