SMS Usage Continues to increase

Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA, released some new SMS and data statistics at last week's CTIA show in Vegas. In June of 2005, over 7 billion text messages were sent across carriers in the US. This is a 154% increase over the previous year. Also, over 50 billion text messages were sent in the last 6 months, which represents a 96% increase over the previous 6 months. At the end of 2005, over 208 million people own a cell phone, a penetration of around 70%. Finally, wireless data revenues reached a total of $8.5 billion in 2005, a 86% increase over the previous year.

6 digit US Short Codes available NOW

The Common Short Code (CSC) program continues to expand rapidly. Over the next couple of weeks, CTIA will start allowing the registration of 6 digit short codes. This will vastly increase the current pool of 600,000 5-digit short codes by adding 1,000,000 6-digit short codes.

UPDATE (6/1/06): 6 digit short codes are now available

MMA releases new Best Practices Guidelines

Today, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), of which Quios is an active member, released Version 2.0 of their Best Practices Guidelines. They can be downloaded here.

The Best Practices Guidelines have been established to provide a better wireless consumer experience by giving the consumer control over the communication to his/her cell phone and by ensuring that the consumer has been properly informed of all premium charges.

The new guidelines now include specific recommendations re. chat programs, very similar to the T-Mobile playbook requirements. It is expected that these recommendations will be enforced by all carriers. Furthermore, we expect that Verizon will soon start accepting chat programs again, provided they conform with the new MMA guidelines.

Success Billing Ratios (SBR)

Here's one of the industry's dirty little secrets. Not all Premium SMS transactions succeed. As a matter of fact, many will fail. Each failed message is lost revenue for the customer, and brings down significantly the average outpayment per message. The ability of a gateway provider to actively manage SBRs and minimize failure rates is therefore one of the most important criteria anyone should use in their selection of a gateway provider. It is significantly more important than the outpayment rates themselves.

The average SBRs we have seen for 2005 are as follows:

Verizon Wireless: 93.4% (i.e. 93.4% of PSMS transactions succeed)
Cingular Orange: 72.3%
Cingular Blue: 60.7%
Tmobile: 54.1%
Nextel/Boost: 54.4%
Sprint: 55%
Alltel: 52%
Dobson: 69.8%

What explains these failure rates ? The reasons tend to be carrier specific, such as:
Cingular/Tmobile: Prepaid phones are not supported (Tracfones, or other). Hence all PSMS messages sent to prepaid subscribers will fail.
Nextel/Boost: Subscribers need to set up an eWallet with the carrier before they are allowed to receive Premium billed messages. Many subscribers don't do that.
Sprint: Sprint's outpayment statement now have a 'pending validation' clause, meaning that the carrier reserves the right to retroactively correct any mistakes in their outpayment statements. This is due to the fact that Sprint used to accept and pay out on MSISDNs that did not belong to their network.
Alltel/Dobson: If a subscriber complains to Alltel or Dobson customer support, they will automatically be blocked from receiving ANY Premium SMS messages

The biggest reason why PSMS messages fail (can account for up to 20% difference between success and failed messages) is because customers submit the wrong carrier information along with the Premium SMS message. Quios has solved this problem for its customers by looking up the carrier in its LNP (Local Number Portability) databases, hence ensuring that the message always gets delivered to the right carrier. As a result, the Quios SBRs are one of the best in the industry.

Summarizing:
SBRs are the single most important determinant of success and profitability of any PSMS campaign. Select a gateway provider based on its ability to manage SBR ratios. Ask your provider about their average SBRs. If they don't know, they probably don't manage it very well....

Verizon and Chat

Verizon has put a hold on all new chat programs pending the finalization of their new chat policies and guidelines on or around December 23rd. They feel that the current programs represent a significant risk for VZW from both a content standards and Best Practices perspective.

Update: As of March 16, 2006, all new chat programs continue to be on hold. No new guidelines have been published yet.

Cingular and Subscription billing

As mentioned before, Cingular is requiring all off-portal subscription programs to move to monthly billing, using Cingular's subscription program. Some aggregators appear to be reluctant to move to this new system, probably because of the significant technology changes required to be in compliance with Cingular's new infrastructure. However, as a Cingular representative recently pointed out: "We have 16 people that we pay $1,000,000 per year to monitor campaigns. Anyone not billing monthly for subscriptions will be caught and shut off". Better be safe than sorry !!

Verizon and binary content

Verizon is getting ready to allow off-portal download of multimedia content such as ringtones, wallpapers, games, etc. The first programs are scheduled to go live in April/May. Preliminary pricing points to a fixed outpayment percentage regardless of retail price, which is different from Verizon's regular outpayment schedule. This means that outpayments are going to be relatively more interesting for lower price points (<$1.99), and less interesting for higher price points.

Dobson, Alltel and chat

In addition to Verizon, it appears that Dobson has now also put a hold on new chat programs where as Alltel is following Tmobile by limiting the premium billing of chat services to 99c. As a result, it is increasingly difficult to launch cross-carrier chat services on new short codes. Here's a summary of the limitations by carrier for chat services:

• Verizon: on hold.
• Cingular: no limitations.
• Sprint: limited to 50c per message. Human content filtering required.
  
• Tmobile: limited to 99c per message
  
• Alltel: limited to 99c per message
• Dobson: on hold.
• Nextel/Boost: no limiations.
  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.