MMS now quite popular

Picture messaging reaches a respectable one million a day in the UK.

Although it is clear that the predictions that MMS would replace SMS are now best forgotten, operators have been slow to release figures for the number of MMS messages that users were sending. This led inevitably to conclusions that the number of messages was well below exectations.

Now the MDA has ben able to secure the agreement of UK operators to issue a combined total from them of the number of P2P MMS that are being sent.

Earlier this year the MDA revealed that over half of the UK’s phones are picture-capable with the UK’s first five megapixel camera phone now available from LG, and one and two megapixel cameras becoming commonplace in handsets

As the number of people using camera phones grows, more and more users are sending and receiving the photographs they take. It won't be overtaking SMS anytime soon, but we extend a warm welcome to MMS into the family of mobile messaging products.

An alternative to MMS is WAP Push or URL sending. It costs the same as SMS, and can be sent from web-based messaging system, such as txt4ever.

Nearly 4 billion texts per month

November's figure of 3.8 billion text messages takes the annual total so far to a staggering 37 billion, according to figures released today by the Mobile Data Association (MDA).

Person-to-person texts sent across the UK GSM network operators last month show an incredible increase of 1 billion on the total sent during the same period in 2005. November’s total represents an average of 126 million text messages currently sent per day in the UK.

On 6th December 2005, the MDA forecast that text messaging figures would rise to deliver an annual total of 36.5 billion text messages for 2006. This estimate was revised in August 2006 to 40 billion which it is now clear it will slightly exceed.

On New Year’s Day in 2006 165 million SMS were sent,is the highest ever daily total yet recorded, a figure that is sure to be exceeded again this year.

Prevous years have been beset with message delays as the networks struggle to cope with the sudden demand. However, networks have increased their capacity to match the continued growth of SMS and hopefuly significant delays will be something in the past.

Backing Up Phones

How many people back up their mobile phone contacts?
Very few. Yet for most people their mobile is their only source for their contacts. Gone are the days when people have a written phone book.
What are the solutions?
Sim card readers are cheap and easily available but have two main problems:

• They only read the SIM not the phone memory
• They can be lost or broken just as easily as the phone

The other option is backing up to PC. This is probably better, but the phone data connections do not always work - Mac users have problems with Nokias, for example and for many people the technology is too complex.
Data is held on your PC, which means it can't be accessed if you loose your phone when you're away from it.

We have developed a solution which gets around both of these problems. It's a Symbian application that backs up your phone book (memory AND sim) to your web-based messaging account, txt4everywhere. It doesn't require a data connection or Bluetooth and is fast and simple.

Mobile Data Charges

(dodgy dealings in the world of the mobile operator ... yet again)

When you connect to the internet from your computer, the charges are pretty simple. With broadband, for example, you pay a flat rate per month and there may or may not be limits on that data transfer. None the less the charges are pretty clear.

When it comes to mobile phones, the cost of transferring data is more confusing. Most people have an idea of what they pay for calls and texts, although the networks have added confusion to this by exempting certain types of calls or texts from bundles along with the excessive costs of roaming. However when it comes to data – emails and downloading files, the mobile networks have taken advantage of the lack of mobile users by adding in additional and often exorbitant charges for transferring data.

What is Mobile Data?
Mobile data is anything that is moved around using the internet connection on your phone. This includes emails, the internet or downloading ringtones, backgrounds or games. This facility on the phone can be very useful for delivering additional information for users, and if it weren’t for data charges it could be done very cheaply. For example providers or games and ringtones commonly use a method called Wap Push to send you the file. Wap push is simply a text message that, when opened, connects to the file which is stored on the internet.

What is the cost of Mobile Data?
The exact cost of data varies widely from network to network and from package to package. If you buy a data card then there will be a reasonable allowance for data (typically 30 meg) within the monthly tariff. Standard monthly phone tariffs will include a few megabytes of data free. Most pay as you go users will be charged for all the data they download.
These charges are start at £1 per megabyte up to £7 per megabyte. And if you use your phone to download data while roaming the cost can be u to £20 per megabyte.
Worse still, this information is not easy to come buy. Look on your mobile operator’s site and see if they will tell you? For pay as you go users they don’t even see the cost on their monthly bills.

Opportunities
The great thing about the newest generation of mobile phones is their ability to offer games, music and even video. Your phone could quite easily replace your mp3 player.
With powerful devices carried around all the time by almost everyone, there is a great opportunity both for people to create music, videos or games and quickly and easily distribute them.
The barrier, however is the amount that mobile users will pay their networks to download it. If a 3 minute song is 3 megabytes, for example, then a pay as you go user will pay £21 to download it.

What’s the solution?
In an ideal world, we’d be paying the same as an internet connection on our computers. In fact this could be a perfect way to sell 3g phones. The networks offer a fast data connection for unlimited downloads at the same price as your home broadband.
However back in the real world, that isn’t going to happen just yet.
One option is to deliver via MMS, multi media message service. This is also problematic for the cost of delivery (30p per message), compatibility and most significantly, the file size. This is limited by the phone and may be as small as 100kb.
Wap push has a number of advantages over MMS. For example, opening a link to a wap site can identify your phone’s operating system and deliver a compatible file. There is also no limit on the file type or size.

Fair Data
The solution that we are looking for is pre-buying data from the networks. What that means for the user is the cost of the data can be included in the price of the item. At the moment it is possible for content providers to pre-buy data at around 30p per megabyte. Still not cheap, but much less than the £1-7 that a user will be charged.
We will be including pre-paid data within our Mobile Publishing System, Immedia24. It makes the possibility of sending full track music or even videos a reality.
As pre-paid data becomes more common hopefully the price will begin to drop. We have called this Fair Data, as what you are getting is completely clear.

Mobile Surveys

Surveys by text are a simple and cost-effective way of gathering feed-back. We are now incorporating this into txt4ever, which provides all the tools to set up and run a mobile-based survey.

The mobile user will typically take the following steps:

Sedd an initial text message of the keyword to a shortcode number
Receive an automated reply with the survey questions and insturctions on how to answer.
Send a reply message which is stored in the system and can be exported as a datafile for further analysis.

The system can handle multiple keywords and sub kewywords. For example, if you think xxx reply with survey a. This can then generate a secondary question and so on.

All in all, mobile surveys are a great way to engage and get feedback - it's fast, direct and cheap

More on data charges

Whilst the mobile phone networks charge between £1-£7 per megabyte of data to download, the actual cost to them is likely to be pennies or even fractions of a penny.
We can now pre-by data, which we can attach to content. The charge for this is around 30p per megabyte. Much less than the charge made to mobile users, but still not sufficient enough to include it in the price of a download.

Fair Data
The concept behind this is to charge mobile a users a fair price to receive data, which is reflective of the true cost to the mobile networks.
We are campaigning to make sure this happens, but until then it will be a case of charging users a small extra fee for receiving that data.

Mobile Data Charges

Sending an SMS to a mobile phone is pretty straight forward. All mobiles can accept them and send them.
When it comes to pictures, sound or video the situation is somewhat different. They can either be sent by MMS or via a link to the file or a wap site.
The link/wap site option is the most straight forward on a technical level - it can be sent in an SMS so it is almost universal for mobile users. The problem comes when the mobile users tries to access the link. Some networks (such as 3) do not automatically enable their phones for wap links, and most require an 18+ registration for non-portal sites.
However once that wap/internet connection is enabled, the problem is the cost of the downloads. On some monthly rental tariffs they allow some data transfer within set limits. Above a few megabytes they start to charge. The networks charge between £1 and £7 per megabyte of download.
So to download a 3 minute song - which is around 3 megabytes the user could pay £21 to their network for the privilage. Of course this is not made clear in contracts or tariffs.

Is there a solution? Well I think there is. In an idea world the networks should offer their data connection in the same way as home internet - just a simple flat rate. In fact if the mobile phone operators wanted to sell shed loads of 3g phones the best way would be to offer the data-connection at a home broadband price - £17 per month with high download limits.

Until then, the option that we are exploring is pre-paying for the data - it is a few pence per megabyte and can be incorporated into our existing system.

Mobile Data Charges

One of the major issues for mobile downloads, such as videos or music is that users are charged by their mobile operator for their data. I
Take a 3 minute song - it will be just under 3 meg in size.
The operators have blurred the issue, but if your on a basic contract, there will be a monthly allowance of a few megabytes after which they start charging.
If you're on pay as you go you'll be even worse off. Networks charge up to £3 per megabyte of download even though the cost to them is pennies. And because you don't get itemised bills you will never know how much a download has cost you.
Essentially this is a complete scam by the mobile phone operators but it presents a major problem for content providers.
Take our 3 megabyte song - lets say you buy it on a £1.50 premium SMS charge. You will then pay another £9 in data charges if you're an unfortunately pay as you go user.

Is there a solution? Well there are two:
1. Use MMS for delivery. The problem with this is two-fold. Firstly not all networks support MMS and all file formats in the same way - it doesn't always work. Secondly for it will cost the content provider up to 30p to deliver the MMS.
They could use a video shortcode (or MMS shortcode) - but currently the costs of this are very expensive and only likely to be used for the largest content providers.

2. Pre-pay for the data
The system works like this: you send a link to the file, or a wap link to the mobile user in the reply to the PSMS request.
That link is to a URL which does not incurr data charges to the networks - the data has been prepaid. The cost of this data is a few pence per megabyte and can be included in the cost of the download.

Right now, the second option is not widely available, however we have managed to incorporate this in our mobile content management system, immedia24.
My plan is to promote this 'fair data' policy so that mobile users understand that we're not ripping them off but that the mobile operators are doing that.

Paypal Mobile

After some months of chasing I finally got to email someone at Paypal Mobile about how we can integrate their product into our SMS/Mobile Content Management system.

Unfortunately they are not remotely interested. I was told that:
"Paypal Mobile is focussed on the retail sector for real products and macro payments, rather than mobile content, text messages or downloads."

OK, fine, so how about using mobile phones to pay for these 'real' products then?

I was told:
"We can only take payments via a website. WAP payments will not be enabled until early 2007 at best." And I believe there are no plans to allow payments by SMS.

I find this all very disappointing. Developers such as ourselves are looking for mobile payment systems that don't have the costs and problems of network based PSMS. Here are Paypal, with the ability to provide a killer application for mobile payments but they're not interested.

FREE 'DONATION BY TEXT' SERVICE, txt4giving

txt4giving a new text messaging and donations system for charities, is being offered free by London-based innovation company Formation.

The system is accessed through the web - so there's no need to install any software - and no charge is made for setting up the keywords and shortcodes for taking donations by SMS. Mobile phone users can donate to any charity set up on the system by texting to a premium rate number.

The donations by text will attract Gift Aid, because a clear audit trail is automatically stored.

This flexible system allows campaigns to be set up quickly, including the choice of sending an automated reply message to thank donors, provide more information about the charity, send relevant weblinks, as well as providing unique, numbered receipts to users.

The charity advertises a shortcode number for donations.

The donor texts a keyword to the shortcode number 60300. The texts cost the donor ��1.50 plus the standard network charge*, taken automatically from the existing credits on their mobile.

The donor receives an acknowledgement which is composed by the charity - for example: 'Thankyou for your donation, please visit our website to see how your money is being put to good use.'

Of the 150 pence donated, 17.5% (26.25p) is paid in VAT, the mobile phone networks take 39p This leaves 84.75p Formation take 4p, and 80.75p is received by the charity GiftAid of 28% (22.61p) is claimable. So each text donation is worth 103.36p

'Charities should be freely given the benefit of systems which have been developed for business. Text messaging is a powerful tool, ideal for generating charity donations. These donations can qualify for GiftAid as there's a clear audit trail. It's important that there's a system that both charities and donors can trust, which follows good practice. Transparency is vital as charities need to know exactly what happens with every penny donated, and we are completely open about the costs.'

*This procedure conforms to ICSTIS regulations

Note to editors
Formation has been developing web and mobile applications since 1994. The company provides messaging systems for business and the education and health sectors.

Mobile Micropayments

There has been a debate on one of the mobile forums recently about the best way to take micro-payments on mobile phones.

Micro payments are becoming more important as mobile users need to pay for small items - ringtones, wall papers or even content, such as music.

There are essential 3 options:
Premium SMS
Credit Cards
Non-operator billing

Premium SMS
Pros
It's easy, seamless and fast - you can take a payment and deliver content in a single message
Cons
The operators take a large chunk of the money (around 30% depending on the tariff)
It's not world wide (you need codes for each country)

Credit Cards
Pros
Fairly universal and you can take from small to large amounts
Cons
Difficult from a user perspective on mobile. It requires either web access or a difficult and time consuming WAP site

Non-operator billing
These are systems where mobile users will purchase some kind of 'credit' using credit cards or paypal
Pros
Can be universal, better payouts for content providers
Cons
Require pre-registration

All in all, in spite of it's problems, premium SMS is the best method for delivering content, simply because it's the one that mobile users will actually use.

There are additional problems, however:
in the UK premium SMS does not support WAP push
UK mobile networks additionally charge for the data

Premium SMS

Using PSMS
The mobile user must first make a request by text from their phone to the charging number. A reverse charge SMS is sent back -� it is this action which actually deducts the fee from the users phone.
Both the price and process limits how mobile content may be charged � it cannot operate in the same way as credit cards on a website, where a user selects items into a shopping cart and the sum is billed at the end. It also means that charging an existing customer for further content is more complex. For example if you want to charge for access to more content which is accessed from a web or wapsite the user will have to send a new text message.
On the plus side for providers (but not necessarily for the user), reverse charge billing does have a recurring options � so the content provider could, for example, charge a user �1 daily. This starts from a single message requested by the user and ends when they request it to stop.
Inevitably this type of billing system dictates the pricing model for mobile content. In other words, you need to think about how you charge for things. Subscription models lend themselves well to mobile content � the ideal type of application is content that regularly changes.
Although some mobile content is clearly successful � ringtones is now a larger market that CD single sales � there are still massive opportunities for developing new content that will catch the imagination of mobile users.

Delivering Content/Media/Information
There are a number of options for getting information/media onto phones: SMS, MMS, WAP, WAP push or HTML.
Although much maligned after its first introduction, WAP is a very useful tool for delivering content to phones. Most modern phones have WAP/GPRS which it makes it easy to access any type of content: text, pictures, video or music. The increase in 3g phones should make this easier.
Building and hosting a WAP site is relatively straight forward and there are even content management systems available that can manage it. The only downside is that it may be a pain for users to access a bookmark through GPRS.
Once you have your content then its simply a case of sending the URL of the WAP site with the SMS billing message.
Alternatively for text content, it can be sent as an SMS � either with the billing message or as a separate SMS. If it is a small bit of information then this is the easiest method.
MMS has the advantage of being able to deliver any type of content directly to the users phone. The problems with MMS are cost � 30p per message � and compatibility.
Increasingly, HTML � a website � is a an option for many content providers. Many phones can now browse HTML and can provide information in a stripped-down form. Still, HTML (or compact HTML) are really only useful for users with larger screens and PDA-style phones.

SMS Gateways
So youve worked out how youre going to deliver the content, the next thing is to get that from the internet to the mobile phone network. For this youll need an SMS gateway. These are provided by the reverse SMS billing provider and is essentially a gateway through which http requests can be sent and received. The gateway will consist of a series of servers with gsm modems which deliver the information to the networks and then each user.
Although its not necessary to need to know about the way that the gateway talks to the networks, there will be an issue with how you integrate your content with the SMS gateway.
This varies depending on the provider � some only give a raw communications package. They simply deliver the request on to your server and you need to set up your server to with the appropriate response.
Other gateway providers will take a more user-friendly approach whereby you provide them with a simple URL and they will manage the integration to ensure it gets delivered to the user.
Protecting your content from non-paying users is another complexity that providers of wap-based content will need to deal with. There are a number of methods of doing this such as issuing each user with a name and password (time consuming for the user) to generate an individual URL for the user sent as a bookmark.
This is where delivering content by SMS (or MMS) may be easier. The gateway will still need to collect the content from a place on your server (usually with a simple password protection) and sent it directly to the mobile customer.

PSMS Payouts
The advantage of reverse SMS billing is its simplicity. That and the fact that mobile users accept the principle of premium rate charges on their phones. The disadvantage for the content provider is the amount taken by the networks. For a start all billings are including VAT, so the government will take 17.5% for starters. The networks also take a much higher percentage than, say a credit card processor. Then the billing providing company will also take a small share. The revenues offered by each network varies and many processors average this out across all of them. So after everyone has taken their wedge the most a content provider can expect to receive is 55%. Where the billing provider provides a lower set-up and monthly cost along with easy integration then the share of the revenue will be lower.

Other payment options

It is possible to use premium rate voice calls as a method of charging for mobile content. IVR, as it is known, can operate whereby so that the customer phones the premium rate number and will be given a reference code to log-in to a web or wapsite. The problem is that this method of billing is not popular with customers � the extra problems with making the call and then noting a reference number is off-putting. If IVR was a successful method for charging for content then it would have been successfully used on the internet.
The most obvious alternative to Reverse SMS billing is credit cards. Whilst this it is entirely possible to process credit card details by a secure WAP connection it is fairly cumbersome to the mobile phone user. Generally most mobile phone content is relatively cheap � pretty much a micro-payment � credit cards are a complicated and expensive way to handle these. Although a number of providers outside the network operators are looking at electronic wallets that will enable micro payments to be made quickly and cheaply these are far from a reality for most users.
One great advantage of reverse SMS billing by a shortcode is that it has a built-in marketing function. Typically advertising will state text KEYWORD to SHORTCODE and thats it � both the payment and content can be taken care of through one simple point of entry. With mobile content directories still in their infancy, asking users to type in a URL is probably too complex to be effective.

Paypal Mobile
One system that could become the killer application for mobile payments is Paypal Mobile. They now allow users to attach a mobile number as well as an email address to make payments to and from their account. However, the biggest problem with this, is that Paypal are not interested in SMS or mobile based billing systems. The latest word is that it wont be for some time to come!

Regulations
The telecoms business and phone billing in particular is a tightly regulated area and content providers need to be prepared to abide by these.
Already mentioned is that you can only send a reverse charge to the same number that the users request has come from.
Certain short codes must be used for adult content. Last year the networks agreed to restrict certain content to ensure that it could not be viewed by minors. These numbers are the ones that begin with 89. In order for a mobile user to get content from these numbers they must first register their phone as belonging to someone over the age of 18.
Reverse charge billing can only be used to charge for content that is delivered to the users phone or available on the web. You could not use it for mail order items, for example.
The price and frequency of the numbers must be correctly advertised. There are certain statements that must clearly be made on any publicity material, and where this includes recurring charges, the stop keyword must also be stated. ICTIS the telecoms regulatory body has more details covering this on their website.

Premium SMS and Mobile Content Explained (part 1)

The facility to charge mobile phone users for content (PSMS) has seen a new market spring up over the last few years. The biggest use has been by media companies - TV and newspapers, along with ringtones, backgrounds and games. Some ringtones have multi-million pound advertising budgets.
So what is the future for mobile content? What do users want and is there money to be made from this?

What is Mobile Content
The term 'mobile content' refers to anything that is available to users through their phones - ringtones, backgrounds and games were the starting point, but this is becoming more diverse. With the latest generation of phones, any type of media (text, pictures, music or video) can be delivered to a mobile phones and a charge made for it.

I don't think that content is the most appropriate term for it. Something like Mobile Media or Mobile Information Services is more relevant to users.

Mobile Payment Systems
The most common way to charge users for the media received on their mobile is through reverse charge SMS. Simply, the user makes a request by SMS and the message thats sent back to them deducts a fixed charge from their phone.

Shortcodes
Reverse charge billing is done via a five or six digit numbers as these are easiest for the users - commonly known as shortcodes. In order for a short code to work, there needs to be an agreement by all of the networks to accept this number (unless its a number specifically for one networks users). To own that short code number generally costs £�1000+ to set up and around £�750 each month. For larger organisations such as TV companies this is a small cost and its common to have a dedicated short code for a specific TV programme.
For someone just starting out, or for smaller content providers this may not be viable, so short codes may be shared across a variety of services.

Keywords
In order to distinguish different services on a shared code, keywords are used. So for the number 86122 may have many different users whose particular content is identified by their keyword: ringtones, backgrounds. There are no limits to the keywords for a shortcode number � its simply method of identifying which content the user wants. Unlike an email which has a subject line and a header, this cannot be altered in SMS. Therefore the data must be contained in the text mesage itself.

Reverse SMS Billing or Premium SMS (PSMS)
Each shortcode has one price attached to it - these prices can be 10p, 25p, 50p, 75p £1, £1.50, £3 and £5. This price is set when the number is initially set up. It is possible to charge multiples of the shortcode price by sending more than one message. So if the content provider wants to charge £2, for example, then the user would receive 2 £1 messages.

Payouts
One problem facing mobile content providers are how little actually ends up in their pockets.
If you take a £1.50 message the break-down is as follows:
26.25p VAT
up to 45p to the networks
Obviously this is a barrier and it limits the content that can be delivered. This is particularly unfortunate for charity donations by text as they do not get the VAT back from the governemnt. The only small consolation is that in a system such as txt4giving.com, the message reports allow them to show an audit trail for Gift Aid.

... continued