Comments on: Forum: When will UK mobile operators make the return on Premium SMS more appealing?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:22:28 +0000

Hi Steve

That sounds like a PR issue, maybe we should have a chat some time.

Patrick

By: Steve Procter

Steve Procter — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:30:47 +0000

Visa and Mastercard do very well thankyou very much out of 1.79% from all our credit card transactions. So for the mobile operators to need 25-30% out of premium rate (more on the lower tariffs) is utter nonsense.

At iTAGG we’ve provided a premium sms gateway for small businesses and other organisations, charities, etc for many years, and I know hand on heart that if one day the operators woke up and all suddenly said they only want 2%, that iTAGG’s premium sms traffic would multiply exponentially overnight from all sorts of genuine businesses/charities. So the question is, do the operators want 30% of Â£100 or 2% of Â£1million?

steve

By: Archiegitdog

Archiegitdog — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:36:29 +0000

Counting Premium SMS volume is a complete pain in the ass requiring trillion reports etc etc. There are so many providers, aggregators, short codes, promotions etc etc. Vice versa there are too few people to do the work what with trying to strike up new relationships, calm down current relationships and look for new premium revenue streams. Also so many providers are scammers or con artists that a lot of time is taken to close them down, issue warnings or “point” them in the right direction.

The networks get asked all the time to waive premium charges for good causes but the only one I directly know of was Children in need (or Red Nose day – it was sometime ago). In the end it was such a pain in the ass that we made a sufficient donation to make the problem go away. You also need all Networks to buy into the cause for there to be consistency. Each Network already supports charitities directly so rarely go outside there yearly nominated ones.

Finally – the Networks need approxiamtely average 25 – 30% EBITDA on all revenue streams to satisfy ALL stakeholders including owners, directors, future projects etc etc. Unfortunately I have not worked in premium sms world (for a network) for 3 years now but thought the above might be of help

By: Steve Procter

Steve Procter — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:15:33 +0000

hey Ewan, where/when did smstextnews Forums come from? Cool idea. What is the protocol now? Do we respond to the blog entries or are the forums the correct place for us to have discussions.

steve

By: John

John — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:14:34 +0000

Ah bugger, you have to register to reply.

Here’s my 2 pence. Service providers think of mobile operators as the Visa or Mastercard in the payment scheme. They are wrong. The mobile phone operator is the Tescos, the Marks and Spencer, the Wall*mart. They are the people running the retail estate, the shop, and the shop is the phone screen and the network it runs off.

Service providers usually pipe up at this point and say they are doing all the advertising and promotion, getting the customers in etc. I’d reply – big deal, so do Cilit Bang. But Cilit Bang rely on the consumers of their product being able to actually get it from somewhere.

Now, how many retail environments can you think of where the shopkeeper only gets 22% of the total ex-vat price?