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To: 100cfm who wrote (81526)	9/26/2000 10:08:03 AM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Some (old?) networks in for example India did or does not support SMS messaging, others have free SMS messaging, according to the info on roaming I could find in Finland, Sonera roaming agreements. (she used both her finnish Sonera SIM and roaming agreement and a local prepayed SIM card, which did not include SMS service but was very cheap) Free SMS messaging from the web was around in Finland 3-4 years ago when the service was new, later on it was popular to find sites in other countries who were at the same introduction stage and allowed international (EU) messaging. (the site you provided did not approve international numbers, just 10 digits) This is kind of the same as the operator subsidizing a "free phone" for a 2 year or similar contract and 10% of future phone bills to the car dealer,etc who sells the bundle. Both of these are now "illegal" in Finland, according to rules on fair competition, correct pricing. In the early stages one could legally interprete it as "marketing", introducing a new service, but not anymore. That is, there are no "free lunches", although the big ones try to keep smaller ones out of their market doing this. Last year this fight was fought on allowing other operators use incumbent operators masts, networks, backbones, cost of roaming, who pays what to whome,etc. (for example between the nordic nations and operators) The EU-goal of at least 4 competing operators in all regions is now starting to be reached, our "old Bell" (Sonera), the finnish private operators Elisa (has always been some 30-50 of them, but mostly locally active), Telia from Sweden and our largest non-telco IProvider, who now is into both international calls and just started as a GSM operator. (and all can use each others masts to set up their antennas "for a fee"..of course..) In terms of India it was of course Sonera who had roaming agreements with (almost?) all local GSM operators while Elisa just had a couple of roaming agreements. Anyway, I never figured out the bills exactly, but while the India-Finland voice-calls clearly were (very) expensive, the SMS messages seemed to be really cheap. (note the difference between visiting businessmen, tourists and young students) My point that SMS messaging has been mostly successfull for teenagers, etc with a limited budget, one SMS message maybe 1/16 - 1/4 the cost (real cost) of a voice call. (investments,capacity, etc, difficult to calculate cost but clearly very cheap to serve 10,000 SMS messages compared to 10,000 voice calls) But it is not "free" (except part of the advertisement budget during the initial marketing phase) Ilmarinen P.S The "free" voice calls, payd by having to listen to advertisement never took off in Scandinavia, maybe because advertisers weren't ready to pay enough, maybe because of drowning teenagers with advertisement?? (what about USA) P.P.S. Advertisement using SMS messages is one part of the equation, my brother+family on vacation in Greece were greeted with a SMS message from the local GSM provider, almost when stepping out of the plane. (I wonder if the site you provided collects phone numbers for the future??)