Comments on: Verizon Wireless Doing Its Best To Strangle SMS Content

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:47:38 +0000

That is some bull!!!…I have friends with alltell and we can hardly text at night because we don’t get each other’s messages for hours after the fact. Does anyone else have this problem

By: McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Big Bell Dogma: October 2008

McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Big Bell Dogma: October 2008 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:43:07 +0000

[...] “Verizon Wireless Doing Its Best To Strangle SMS Content” [...]

By: Blogwatch: Radiohead vindicated, WiMAX phone pics, and GSM confusion « TelecomTV *Raw

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:00:28 +0000

[...] unrest over mobile operators, courtesy of Carlo Longino on the MobHappy blog, who says that US operator Verizon Wireless is doing its best to strangle SMS content: Verizon [...]

By: fred

fred — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:54:08 +0000

Is this really such a bad thing? It only makes marketers tighten the targeting parameters when delivering SMS based offers and info. Services that are solely information providers will no doubt be hurt. Companies that have proven advermarketing models at one and a half cents will survive just fine at 3 cents. This move certainly tightens up the quality of information that is delivered to an end users phone. One of our real estate clients currently pays $100 per home sold when there is even a single text inquiry sent while the home is on the market. In that example the metrics still work just fine.

By: Amir

Amir — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:55:06 +0000

It’s possible to speculate whether there’s more to this VZW move then beats the eye. Perhaps a move to test the water, but I’m sure VZW could have guessed at the response. Perhaps a coordinated move by the operators to either raise the MT SMS cost across the board or trying to move people to mobile email plans? (unlikely, since when did US operators decide on a common strategy? and why would VZW agree to take the lead).
If they expected this cost to materialize in $30 CPM then they are so wrong. Average Mobile CPM today is already lower and it would only drop, not the other way around.
Anyway, a poor move by VZW, managing again (remember how US operators handled mobile code scanning?) to confuse an evolving marketplace. If anything, US marketers sitting on the fence will stay there longer, see where this curve ball end up.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:05:52 +0000

The content provider paying for SMS has of course been the norm in every other country since day dot. Today you pay say 10 cents in Australia, 8 cents in the UK and perhaps even 15 cents in France and these prices were built into any SMS based activities. The travesty here of course is that none of the other countries charge the receiving party for the message IN ADDITION to this cost. I agree with Allan, focus on the web based services. US carriers have never properly supported the channel, there is more red tape than a Valentines Day wrapping party and the whole thing is confusing to the marketing world. Focus on open platforms, it is a smaller market right now but momentum is strong.

By: stephen

stephen — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:10:09 +0000

I have informed Verizon that will be losing a customer. I have 4 family members on my account.

By: Allan MacKinnon

Allan MacKinnon — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:12:06 +0000

I agree, very strange move by Verizon when you consider the impact it may have on 3rd-party mobile services. The silver lining might be that providers begin to hedge toward non-SMS mobile data services. The $200+/MByte SMS party will eventually end… the Twitters of the world might as well get started now given that their customers have become mobile-web savvy.

-ASM

By: Drew Jones

Drew Jones — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:26:54 +0000

Certainly not a sharp move by the folks a Verizon. But I think our business model (www.saysomobile.com), and the industry in general, can absorb the cost with a little change in perspective.

What’s going to have to change is the expectation that it should only cost fractions of a cent to deliver a marketing message. Even at 3¢, mobile is still the most efficient direct marketing medium available (crazy-high response rates and low development and delivery costs).

And frankly, when compared to the horrible response rates email and the high development and delivery costs of direct mail (creative, postage and printing), this is still the future of direct marketing from where we sit.

Drew >> http://www.saysomobile.com