T-Mobile says no to HSL’s SS7 demand; offers IP connectivity instead

By on October 19, 2006 in News, Operators

Link: 160Characters Association

An interim ruling by Ofcom says that T-Mobile is not under an obligation to allow an SS7 interconnection to SMS aggregator HSL

Alex saw this one on 160 chrs and whacked it over. It’s a bit geeky — HSL are wanting an SS7 level connection to T-Mobile’s network.

If you’re not down with the lingo, here’s a quick comparison. ‘SS7′ is effectively a double hard bastard dressed in a shocking pinstripe whilst your common-or-garden ‘IP connection’ (what T-Mobile are offering hSL) is a £69 Tesco suit with some rather old unpolished shoes.

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  • njar

    ummm…

    Good on Ofcom for this. HSL were taking the mick.

    You’re not exactly on the button with your write up..

  • ewan

    Yeah I got a bit carried away with the pinstripes!

  • http://invalid.name Dan Lane

    I think you missed the shocking point here, Orange actually gave HLR to HSL over SS7 WTF were they thinking!.

  • njar

    The pinstripes story did make me chuckle :)

    The full ofcom report is pretty interesting..

    Dan – yes very strange that Orange has done this.

    Sounds like HSL want to do off-net SMSC services, which effectively puts them in competition with the networks they want to host connections with.

    For the purpose of delivering simple outbound messages, the network offered connection i.e. SMPP etc should be fine assuming you’re written great interface software, and if you have a gateway that will give you redundancy and capacity by balancing across a few MNO’s..

  • http://www.sendmytxt.co.uk Alex

    Njar – they were (are?) planning to offer a service whereby you can change your phones SMSC number to theirs and send messages via them instead of your network. At least that’s what the press release said a while back on their website.

    The draft PDF on OFCOMs site makes interesting reading..

  • njar

    I read the piece several weeks ago and didn’t re-read before posting. I think there are some opportunities in this area, but more in an MVNO/wifi capacity, and you’d also want to have a deal/deals in place with the carriers you’d be using such that you could prove you weren’t on an out and out mission to cannibalise them..

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