Are carriers going around rather than through INSP? Does INSP have the technology, but the problem may be carriers would rather find their own solutions?
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by: cabvineyard (M/Connecticut) 11/09/01 05:10 pm
Msg: 320273 of 320273
U.S. Carriers Finally Get Together On SMS
17:15 PM GMT on Nov 09, 2001
[ComputerWire News]
The penny has finally dropped. U.S. mobile operators have begun to work together with the aim to creating SMS interoperability between their networks.
At the JP Morgan Millennium.01 telecom analyst conference in New York, Chuck Levine the president of Sprint PCS said yesterday that through the CTIA industry group, Sprint is working with its rivals to ensure that subscribers will be able to exchange SMS text messages with other customers using different networks.
The fact that this is not possible today has severely stunted the growth of SMS in the U.S. Since there are six large mobile operators in the U.S., it is unlikely that a subscriber would be able to send mobile text messages to many of their friends.
However, Levine told ComputerWire that because the work just started in the last few weeks, it will be at least six months or a year before consumers see the results. Almost exactly two years after Sprint became the first US service provider to offer wireless data services with WAP phones, Levine is still looking forward to persuading subscribers to use their phones for things other than voice services. About 10% of Sprint's users currently use wireless data services including wireless instant messaging and WAP browsing.
Along with the faster connections that Sprint's next-generation network will bring, Levine now sees text messaging as an important tool to increase mobile data usage. He said: "3G will up data usage a little faster but it will take some time ... We are also looking forward to interoperable SMS and we are cooperating with the industry on this."
What Levine didn't mention to the potential investors in the audience is that Sprint doesn't actually offer two-way SMS services yet. After explaining the importance of text messaging for data usage, Levine told ComputerWire that this will change but he did not give a time frame.
Sprint's sudden interest in SMS almost certainly has something to do with its new MVNO partner Virgin Mobile. UK company Virgin, which clinched a deal allowing it to piggyback on Sprint's network, will see SMS support as an important element if it is to make headway with the youth market in the U.S.
While Levine said that carriers will have a lot of work to do before they will be able to exchange SMS text messages, he estimated that the technology upgrade costs will be small. In spite of the fact that the control channel, which is part of every mobile network, only needs the addition of an SMS gateway in order to carry two-way SMS traffic, U.S. operators have been much slower than their European counterparts to offer the service.
Because IM usage is already popular on US desktops, Sprint has concentrated instead on offering text messaging via AOL's instant messaging platform. In theory it could be technically possible to send an IM from an IM-enabled handset or a desktop to a subscriber with a simple SMS phone and vice versa. However, this level of sophistication seems to have eluded U.S. operators so far.
Perhaps the interoperability initiative will stop U.S. operators from musing about the amount of SMS traffic carried by European operators, and instead give them a chance to do something about it and try to catch up. The Cellular Telecommunication and Internet Association had not returned calls at press time. |
