As we have mentioned repeatedly, the carriers just don't understand SMS. They need to be lowering the fees to get more Americans involved, not raising the fees.

I would imagine a great deal of marketers will just say “Fine, let's run the program, but only on the carriers that are not imposing this fee.”

Obviously, most US based SMS gateway providers are not in agreement with this policy, right as most companies are cutting back their spending anyhow based on the economy, or lack there of…

Free isn't the way to go. Definitely not. But potentially killing the market for MT messaging via huge cost increases is bad news for the US.

They ain't no more leverage. The economic reboot button has been pressed. It will be slower than Windows to get the machine back up and ready to run again. In the meantime leaverage is dead.

Free isn't. You pay now.

The success of SMS is founded on it's ability to allow people to communicate. Having people broadcasting indiscriminately, ie not communicating but telling, devalues this service.

I'm comfortable that if someone wants to send me a message it's going to cost them. It makes them consider whether it's really worth both our whiles sending me that information (ultimately I'll be paying). That way when I receive an SMS i can be pretty sure it's going to be useful/of interest to me.

Marketers trumpet the fact the 90%+ of SMS messages are opened and acted on on receipt. Heaven help us if we get to the email situation where 50% of what we receive is junk. People will ignore the new message indicator and response rates will plummet. It'll take years for spam filters to find themselves into operators or onto our phones. By then then customer will have moved on.

IMHO