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.