i'm starting to see more and more applications using IP over GPRS or 1X as the bearer for messaging applications. a lot of these are doing more than just text messaging, including full fledged IM, chat, push-to-talk and what's equivalent to P2P MMS. the marketing behind this is clear..."hey! it's a lot cheaper to do this over GPRS than it is to use messaging!" When you compare the 5 cents/SMS and up to 50 cents/MMS to the 1 cent/K for GPRS data, it's easy to see why there's a plethora of startups trying to close this gap. A good example i've seen lateley is coojo which allows IM, chat, and sending pictures between symbian series 60 phones, with more phone support to come. They support yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, and ICQ - which is orthoganal to the private IM messaging offerings we are seeing by some operators (e.g. Vodafone Messenger).
i imagine that once such things start to become OEM packaged onto devices this will accelerate even more. The point being, if operators are going to continue to bank on SMS and MMS messaging revenues they might paint themselves into a corner.
That said, as a subscriber - i couldn't be more in favor of all-you-can-eat GPRS pricing such as what's offered by T-Mobile in the US (incidentally, they offer unlimited text messaging as well). i want to treat my GPRS connection like any other internet connection, such as my DSL connection. The biggest improvement in the mobile model over the ISP model is being able to charge purchases to my mobile phone bill. I like not having to enter a credit card...so i think this is the right model. Make GPRS free, take a piece of the transactions i charge to my bill. just don't charge me for the bandwidth to download as well.
Posted by Steve at August 6, 2003 09:02 AM