[VoiceOps] SMS apps, providers, and peers

[David Hiers]

Woohoo!  I might have started the longest thread in the history of voiceops :)

I don't know from nothing about business.  All I'm really sure of is
that I've got several furlongs of managers that simply won't go away
until I get some kind of  SMS solution wired up.


Thanks for the input, everyone,


David


PS:  Next I think I'll ask something like "If IPv4 is so broken, why
throw good money after bad and invest in IPv6?"

http://www.forumspile.com/Flame-Flame_on.jpg

:)





On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 8:37 PM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
> Peter Beckman wrote:
>
>>  Hell, I'm not even sure what _I_ am doing next year, much less the rest
>> of
>>  the world when it comes to text messaging communications.  I do know that
>>  SMS is growing now, is in active use now, and for me to put some effort
>>  into building a messaging infrastructure surrounding my VoIP service
>> makes
>>  sense.  If I do it intelligently, then the messaging infrastructure I
>>  build now can support SMS now and whatever comes next later.
>
> Agreed.  At the end of the day, prognostication of such organic market
> trends is informed voodoo at very best.  This will, as it has, remain a
> matter of opinion at the end of the day.
>
>>  Most of the smartphones can't run a messaging app in the background, and
>>  if it can, which one should it?
>
> That is not entirely true.  Many smartphones can run a messaging app in the
> background;  for those that can't, there are ways around it.
>
> For example, Apple is notorious for prohibiting the concept on the iPhone.
>  However, it does provide a "push notification" API which can be used by an
> application that has servers on the back end holding connections to
> messaging services open surrogately.  In my case, I use the Beejive IM
> client to stay connected to our company's internal Jabber/XMPP server;  when
> one of our associates sends me a message to the appropriate account, I
> receive an incoming message on my phone that is identical to an incoming SMS
> in appearance and disposition. However, when I press "View" it will open
> Beejive instead of the SMS application and initiate a conversation.  Thus,
> my experience of receiving an IM this way is not different than my
> experience of receiving an SMS, although I agree that other limitations are
> presently in force (who can send me an IM that way, how easily, what type of
> phone it takes to make that happen, etc.)
>
> It's a nasty hack, to be sure, and I predict this aversion to TSRs will
> gradually go away, or be replaced by a more elegant compromise to support
> asynchronously generated incoming events without client-side polling (aka
> "push").
>
>> The only thing all handsets and all
>>  carriers support for public messaging is SMS.  Until the phone can
>>  natively and in a built-in way support other messaging platforms that are
>>  supported by all handsets and carriers, SMS is here for a while.  Just
>>  because it sucks and there are better things out there doesn't mean it's
>>  going away.  Look at Beta vs VHS -- better did not win.
>
> And BlueRay did not displace DVD.  I agree that better is not always a
> winner, especially if it's more expensive.  My position is a bet on whether
> mobile handsets will continue to be used principally as phones and textual
> data terminals in the next 1-3 years.  I predict that they will not, and if
> they will, certainly the user expectations will grow to a superset of what
> SMS currently provides.  The price and maximum length of messages is the
> most crippling, not the format.
>
>>  I believe it is impossible for anyone to know what will replace SMS, or
>>  even if SMS will be replaced entirely in the next 2-20 years.  If you do,
>>  don't tell us!  Build it yourself, and wait for the money to roll in,
>>  because you'll be the only provider offering it.
>
> It is not necessary to know what will replace it with great confidence in
> order to be quite certain that it will be replaced by something.
>
>>  In the meantime, building SMS capabilities into VoIP DIDs is a service
>>  that can be sold now, and my gut says for a good long while (5+ years).
>
> I suppose it really depends on the market and the context.  My argument is
> not that SMS is not useful or sellable now, but rather that the onerous
> terms, tight control and hefty minima aren't worth bothering with.  Our
> premises differ in that I do not share your perception that it is
> practically free money simply being left on the table;  it is not effortless
> or wholly cheap to develop, productise and bill SMS services.
>
> --
> Alex Balashov - Principal
> Evariste Systems
> Web     : http://www.evaristesys.com/
> Tel     : (+1) (678) 954-0670
> Direct  : (+1) (678) 954-0671
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