Cingular SMS Traffic Increases 450% in Six Months Company expands bandwidth to accommodate rapid increase in traffic
ATLANTA, Jan. 29, 2002 -- Cingular Wireless, the nation's second largest wireless carrier, has experienced more than a 450% increase in short messaging service (SMS) subscriber traffic traversing its network over the past six months. The large growth in traffic was largely stimulated by the introduction of services like mobile originated messaging, SMS to e-mail, ringtones, games, and sweepstakes.
"This growth in SMS traffic on the Cingular network is testimony to how quickly data is growing in popularity in the U.S.," said Bill Clift, chief technical officer of Cingular. "The ability to meet customers' data needs today and in the future clearly is a differentiator in the wireless industry. The combination of large volumes of messaging and Cingular's commitment to increase network capacity positions Cingular well as a leader in wireless data."
Cingular's SMS network handles tens of millions of messages on a monthly basis. Between June and October 2001 the number of messages carried on the network tripled. Since October alone, that number has increased by more than 50 percent.
In order to meet the growing demand, Cingular embarked upon a SMS Platform expansion to serve the needs of the existing GSM and TDMA markets as well as for Cingular's GSM overlay. This was done by selecting a single SMS platform that could serve both GSM and TDMA customers. The new platform was designed to offer as much as a ten-fold increase in traffic carrying capacity. GSM and TDMA were also networked together to offer customers messaging across all of Cingular.
"For Cingular, the addition of capacity has been systematic," said Clift. "By design, we initially sized the network for lower volumes. Over time, we listened to our customer's feedback and developed services that our customers wanted. As customers began to use those services, we added capacity to the network based on increased messaging traffic." "We are extremely pleased with the results so far."
Cingular Wireless Interactive Messaging Includes:
MOBILE TO MOBILE TEXT MESSAGING - Mobile-to-Mobile Messaging allows you to create and send short text messages (up to 150 characters) from your Cingular digital mobile phone to other Cingular digital mobile phones. All you need is their 10-digit mobile number. You can also receive messages from other customer's phones.
E-MAIL MESSAGING - Your mobile number is your e-mail address. Receive messages sent from virtually anywhere in the world.
WEB MESSAGING - Anyone with Internet access can send you personalized text
messages directly from our Web site, www.cingular.com, to the display of your phone.
INFO ALERTS - Get news, stock quotes, sports scores, entertainment news or other information on the display of your mobile phone. You choose the topics by using the Cingular My Wireless Window Web site at www.mywirelesswindow.com.
Cingular also offers the Interactive Messaging PLUS service on data-only handhelds enabled for its nationwide Mobitex packet data network, which handles millions of messages per day. Interactive Messaging PLUS gives subscribers the ability to send and receive interactive messages and Internet e-mail (up to 16,000 characters), access calendars, address books, task lists and the like, know when messages have been delivered and read through a special confirmation feature. |
