Bebo

Below is a summary of the community response to my original question, posted to Mobile Monday email lists (Silicon Valley and London). Thanks Mobile Monday! http://www.mobilemonday.net

First, a big thank you to who contributed insights and suggestions...
Christophe Lassus, misscall.mobi. http://www.misscall.mobi
John Ozimek, Chomp PR. http://www.chomppr.com
Helen Keegan, Beep Marketing. http://www.beepmarketing.com
Roger Craven, Givitago. http://www.givitago.com
David Whitewood, Hotxt. http://www.hotxt.com
Imran Limbada, mBlox. http://www.mblox.com
Justin Davies, Ninetyten. http://www.ninetyten.com
Will Neale, d2see. http://www.d2see.com
Matylda Czarnecka, The Bakersfield Californian. http://www.bakersfield.com
Thomas Sheahan, Red Oxygen. http://www.redoxygen.com
Tom Hume, Future Platforms. http://www.futureplatforms.com
Dominic Mason, Haizum. http://www.haizum.com
Rhoanna Glenn, Zamano. http://www.zamano.com
Raj Singh. http://www.rajansingh.com/
Dale Larson, Donordigital. http://www.donordigital.com

Option 1: SMS aggregators
Pros: integrate once, scale to many countries + carriers instantly
Cons: cost of a few cents per message isn't very scalable to large volumes

- Options include: Ericsson IPX, MX Telecom, mBlox, Tanla, Clickatell, Zamano, RedOxygen
- "Some aggregators support all-you-can-eat pricing plans at around $10k per month"
- "The cost of a few pence/cents per message is inevitable and unavoidable; you will be able to negotiate the best rates with volume (obviously), but typically expect to pay 3p-4p per SMS in the UK (the wholesale rate that operators charge in the UK means that you will not be able to achieve your desired price of <1 cent / SMS)."

Option 2: Direct to carriers
Pros: potentially send messages totally free
Cons: good luck getting a deal with the carriers; have to integrate once for each carrier

- "virtually impossible for most operations -- the minimum volume, revenue and technical certification commitments are prohibitive."

Option 3: Email-to-SMS gateways
Pros: free, easy to implement
Cons: could get shut down by carriers at any time; may not be able to reach users on all carriers

- "seem impractical for most commercial use since they are less reliable, subject to filtering or shut down, etc."
- "They're meant only to support consumer-to-consumer traffic."

Option 4: Work with an ad-supported SMS gateway like 4INFO
Pros: free (you can even make some money on the ads); scale instantly to all carriers in supported countries
Cons: worse user experience; may not be available in all countries

- "Don't go down the ad-funded route too soon otherwsie you could be in danger of turning customers off. "

Option 5: "Do it yourself" SMS gateway
- "use Kannel or Now SMS gateway w/ a Multitech modem and write your own code to send an SMS from a modem attached to your PC"
- "will let you send a decent volume per day before the carrier wonders why a particular # is doing so much SMS volume - you can then throttle it across a few diff phones - 20K a day would be considered reasonable. Make sure they are on a unlimited SMS plan of course."
- Mercurio

Option 6: Other alternatives
- Back-door routes/off-shore: "There are a few back door routes normally via South Africa etc but they are unreliable and are being closed down as interconnect agreements are extended to those countries."
- Send SMS via a Java app using a data connection. "The trick is getting people to install the app"
- Hotxt (msgs send via Java app) http://www.hotxt.com
- Miss calls: "You would be charged 1 euro cent per outbound miss call and it would pass your own number across so that the users know they should log into your service (to read their new message for instance). If they phone back the number, the system hangs up immediately (inbound miss call, free for you and the user) and generates an HTTP call back t

Bebo Mobile gave a presentation at the Social Networking Conference a few weeks ago in San Francisco.

The talk was called "If it doesn't work on a billion phones, don't bother", so that should give you a high-level flavor or Bebo's perspective on mobile right there.

Slides are posted here: http://www.bebo.com/PhotoAlbumContac...

Feel free to post thoughts/rants as comments to any of the individual slides.

Thanks!

Be sure to leave a Profile Comment to introduce yourself: http://bebo.com/ProfileCommentPost.j...