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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through September 15, 2003 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Olaf |
Customer is currently using an operator's SMS system to distribute SMS messages that they get paid for via the operator. The service is expensive and not very reliable. Is there a way to use the Now gateway to set up a similar service (without too much interaction with the operator)? | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support (Bryce) |
Olaf, It sounds like what you are talking about is "premium rate" or "reverse billing" SMS. Essentially, the message receiver gets charged to receive a message sent by the content provider. Since the receiver's mobile operator applies the charge to the user, you can't avoid the operator completely. The mobile operator takes a cut of the charge, and the bulk of the charge goes to the message sender / content provider. (Well ... I say bulk of the charge, but that is often only for higher priced messages. Basically as the message price goes up, the content provider can get a bigger cut.) However, at least within country, operators generally have interoperability agreements and billing arrangements for premium rate SMS. So that means that you can check to see what deals are offered by the different operators to see if you might get a better deal from another operator. It's also worth looking at aggregators. This is a volume business, and the operators offer better pricing to higher volume customers. So aggregators buy volume capacity and sell it off in smaller chunks. Keep in mind, however, that you're generally going to pay a setup fee to get a service started (which can make it less compelling to switch), and there are usually annual or monthly fees to pay. As to whether or not the NowSMS gateway will help you ... that's hard to say without specifics. It depends on how the customer is sending messages today, and if there is a better connectivity option that could be afforded by our gateway ... either with the current operator, or with another operator or aggregator. I'd encourage you to search the web ... do a Google search like this: +SMS +"premium rate" +yourcountry and +SMS +"reverse billing" +yourcountry Basically, that's one of the ways that you're likely to track down aggregators in your home country. Your question sounded so simple, and I'm afraid I've given a complex answer that basically opens more questions. Sorry about that, but I hope this helps! -bn | |||
