I got a bit of news in from the SMS industry this morning. Silverstreet, the mobile messaging firm, has just announced they’ve terminated (or ‘delivered’) a whopping 400 million SMS messages in the month of December 2010 alone. This sounds like good news to me.

The chaps over at Silverstreet are understandably delighted and dropped me a note to let me know. It is, as Chief Commerical Officer Simon Landsheer puts it, ‘a big milestone for us’.

I asked Simon to put this in some context for me.

‘Well, this time last year, we did 160 million terminations,’ he explained by email. Nice. That’s some increase!

It’s very difficult to measure Silverstreet’s exact position in the marketplace — but an array of estimates I’ve got from various people I’ve spoken to places them amongst the top ‘Tier 1′ players in the bulk SMS market.

The chances are you probably haven’t come across Silverstreet unless you’re heavily involved in the SMS messaging segment of the industry. I’ve met one or two executives from the company in the past, principally because they’re a paid up full member of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (and board member of the MEF Asia chapter).

The company was founded in 1998 in the Netherlands and grew to become a big player in that market, specifically focusing on SMS services in the entertainment industry. But it wasn’t long before they got stuck into the rest of the marketplace such as retail, education and transportation.

They’ve since expanded out of their home country, with operations extending around the planet — including the United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur, Australia, Singapore, Philippines and Israel.

Silverstreet’s traffic achievements are an excellent indication that far from being on the wane, SMS is still very much a critical component of the marketing mix. Indeed, I’d much rather get an SMS to ask me when I’d like a deliver to be made, rather than a Twitter message or IM message that I’m potentially unlikely to get in a timely manner. The brilliance with the SMS medium is that provided you’re in the vicinity of your handset, you’re going to get a notification and you won’t miss the message. In some cases, the push notifications on platforms such as Apple do a reasonable job, but there’s next to no way you can rely on that medium unless you’re 100% sure everyone you need to talk to is using it. And if you’re a big brand, trying to talk to me via mobile, you do it by SMS.  I actually can’t see this changing in the short term.

Anyway, congratulations to the team at Silverstreet — it’s obviously been a very good year! Keep it up!

And another. And another. And woosh. Across what appeared to be a few minutes, she was text-bombed.

Whether by mistake or by design, she ended up with a heck of a lot of premium rate texts being delivered to her handset. The reader describes it thus:

The 72 unsolicited reverse SMS texts were sent at two second intervals, my daughter was on a trip in her car, when her phone ‘in box’ filled up, she deleted the total content, when it filled up again in the blink of an eye, she again deleted the whole lot, and to this day, we have no idea what the content actually contained.

WIN (as the aggregator in question providing the connectivity for another company who originated the texts) refunded this amount after the reader complained.

All is well, yes?

Well not quite. The reader is — rightly — appalled by the matter. He, I suspect, is thinking that the mobile industry is a normal industry. It’s regulated after all. Right? So this sort of thing shouldn’t keep happening. Right?

Whilst there’s no current complaint, the reader’s astonishment, shock and bewilderment in dealing with both WIN, Ofcom and PhonePayPlus was one I wanted to highlight.

I don’t think he understands how this sort of thing was allowed to go on. And, in many cases… still does continue, only in different ways.

It’s a sad state of affairs when my response to the reader is thus: I’m pleased you got your money back. Let’s move on.

What else can you say?

It’s a seedy industry. It’s roots are seedy. Only a percentage play fair.

It’s a lot better than it used to be, here in the UK.

But there’s still a huge issue between the aggregator supplying the connectivity — and the client companies they work with abusing the aggregator’s connections, often resulting in fines.

What can you do?

Be responsible.

Yes and no. The aggregator viewpoint is simple: They can’t monitor every message. They can’t check every single new service launched. They don’t have the resources. Or they choose not to have the resources.

It’s cheaper to pay the fines, refund the complaints and skim where possible.

It’s all changing though — as premium text message begins to wane in popularity, we’ll begin to free ourselves collectively from the menace that is the premium rate scammers.

Once you get to the likes of the Apple iTunes App Store, the opportunity for scamming seriously diminishes.

Ah dear.

Well they’re more than half way toward their fundraising target of 5,000 pounds. The proceeds are for a UK adoption charity (Adoption UK).

Mike and his colleagues are due to set off on the 12th of September. You can donate here and track their progress (including attracting the attention of an overzealous Tesco car park attendant) here.