Be Excellent To Each Other

Why does (the) SMS still exist?
It's hugely expensive in terms of pence per byte, it's too restrictive, and it's archaic.
Why isn't there a nice unified messenger type of thing like BBM or the new Apple one?

Because it works on all devices.

One thing I'm hoping for is a device from Microsoft that has no traditional telephony at all. Nokia device, Skype for voice, WP7 OS, and IM to replace SMS.

Feex.

That's a great idea.
The only problem is getting SMS messages to old phones. Maybe they could try and handshake somehow and it could fall back to SMS if there was no response.

Although what if it was just out of signal. HMM.

On second thoughts - fuck SMS, let it die.

Because some people don't have fancy internet phones.

If SMS was killable in this manner, smartphones with IM clients would already have killed it. They haven't because there's 4.6bn (yes, billion) handsets out there, all with SMS, but proportionally only a tiny number of them smartphones.

Related article I wrote: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/07/will-ime ... -revenues/

Don't miss the bit about what Americans pay for SMS:These charges are for incoming as well as outgoing. A five-message conversation between two not-on-bundle customers is $2 in AT&T's pocket.

Which is precisely what iMessage does.

You're assuming the existence of a world where the carriers are willing to be reduced to the role of a dumb, interchangeable bit pipe. Good luck with that.

VC startup?

I like SMS.

If you just have a normal 'phone' it isn't connected to the thing that means you can.. what? I have no idea what these words I want are.

Right, try again: because a phone connects to the phone aeriel mast thing, yes? Don't you need a different kind of connection to receive the other kinds of messages?

Sorry, to get all technical on your ass, try and keep up.

We ditched it for SCCM.

I don't think there's one on my radar.

To do what? Build a new network? That's staggeringly expensive. $250k per cell site, with a maximum range of 25-30 miles (down to less than a mile in dense urban areas), multiplied by the area you want to cover, plus the cost of a nationwide fibre backbone with sufficient bandwidth to route all the traffic, plus peering agreements to wire your backbone into the Internet, plus ongoing maintenance costs (both staff -- maybe low tens of thousands to cover Britain -- and consumables) on it all, plus reasonable amounts of redundancy in the coverage and backbone, plus a lot more stuff I haven't thought of. VCs don't throw tens of billions at startups and that's the sort of money we're talking here.

I've thought this myself about them being a bit obsolete but like the Dr. Said, they make phone companies a lot of money and let's not forget... they are massively popular and still relatively young.

I would prefer to use email or IM but then I encounter a problem when trying to contact my parents.

I dunno, I see some real benefits for carriers. Think of the simplicity of a data-only network compared to one that carries data and GSM traffic. You'd still have to handle cell-switching, but that'd be about it. IP handles much of the rest of it. And you'd still be able to compete on the same things you do now - coverage, throughput, price, service - but for a solely data tariff.

I'll admit that the prospect of commoditisation wouldn't be attractive. Without a phone number that you have to MAC across it becomes a hell of a lot easier to just jump around different carriers. It would be an awesome way to solve the roaming problem though - going abroad? Just pick up a data SIM while you're out there, and you're done.

The difference is that it's an IP service rather than a phone protocol, but this is carried over either GPRS (in the case of a GSM signal) or 3G/UMTS - i.e, data packets over exactly the same signal that your voice calls use. Or your SMSs.

Obviously not all subscribers get the data bit, usually because their phone can't use it, but apart from that, yes. HTH.

Exactly this, except for "unattractive" read "deeply, incredibly, hugely terrifying". I suspect what you are describing will be where we end up, but market forces will have the drag the carriers there kicking and screaming first, and it won't happen quickly.

People look at how much an SMS costs us compared to how much it costs the carrier and get uppity about profiteering, but carriers have to make staggering upfront investments in radio licences and network infrastructure before they can make a penny. They do some pretty delicate mathematical dancing to try and ensure that the money made from a network will be bigger than what it cost to make in the first place, and if they were all making money hand over fist then Orange and T-mobile wouldn't be merging. Hence, the idea of voluntarily reducing their profit margins on cash cows like SMS and voice traffic is like the turkey voting for Christmas to come early.

I'm a bit concerned about this Apple SMS replacement. I have extremely poor 3G and Edge reception at my desk, but no problem sending or receiving SMS. If Apple pushes SMS through iMessage, I fear I'm going to have problems sending and receiving - I'd say about 80% of SMS at my desk are to/from iPhones.

Quite. But the smart carriers out there must be already working out how they're doing to deal with the death of traditional telephony when it happens, as it clearly will.

There are a couple of regulatory problems though - the legal requirement to be able to phone the emergency services for one. Although interestingly that requirement doesn't exist on a 3G iPad, so I guess it depends how you define 'phone'.

Now read this. Maybe this will resolve my potential issue.

In fact that's part of the GSM spec isn't it? So that wouldn't actually be that relevant.

dutch kpn (buggest provider, offspring of old dutch state telecom ptt) is already losing lots of money to whatsapp, sms here in holland has bene down incredibly in the last 4 months... (we've got one of the highest smartphone densities there are, see hiw often dutch topics are trending on twittter, even though we're so small).. kpn and vodafone are looking in to charging for whatsapp msgs, so actually testing you data traffic for whatsapp msgs..leading to net-neutrality discussion (in parliament, where most don't even know what whatapp is).... blackberry data packages have always been more expensive here, not sure that's because of ping..

I like texting people. It's often preferable to tedious IM conversations. Hmph.

As for the cost, my sister had a phone until the early 2000s that gave free unlimited texts... because it was so old it came from before the networks realised they'd be popular and they could make money off them.

Which apparently doesn't apply to the iPhone, as you can't make an emergency call unless you have a PIN set up on the handset.

What do you think the difference is?


Can't we use someone else's? Like 99% of all broadband uses BTs copper?

Message length with regular breaks, so you don't get people going "hi" and saying fuck all for an hour and getting stroppy if you don't reply. And not having to reply then and there even if you read the message right away.

It appears the difference is "in your head", then.

What? No.

HAND!

No. BT only do that because the government make them, and the government only make them because most of the initial investment was made when BT were publicly owned.

In hindsight, that's probably the model OFCOM should have adopted for the initial build of a cell networking in Britain, but of course this all went down in the late 80s when privatisation was all the rage.

Do you mean "if"? And if you did: yes, I've never been able to fathom how Apple get away with that.

Is there not an "Emergancy" button on the lock screen? That's how Android does it (although I don't know if all apps that provide alternative locks do that).

No. Having said that, it's also part of the GSM spec that a SIMless phone be able to place emergency calls, but that's never worked on any of the Nokia or S-E handsets I've tried it on.

As I recall, an iPhone (and other smartphones) are not considered to be phones by OFCOM (or some other body). Blackberry falls under this too. This may explain it (Blackberry et al may have left the facility in as it is easy to do so, rather than because it is a requirement). I found this out when HMRC changed the tax treatment on them, as they were not considered phones by legal definitions and not allowable for certain reliefs.

>It's hugely expensive in terms of pence per byte, it's too restrictive, and it's archaic.
For us or for them? Aren't they carried in the normal keep alive messages, or something? (sub please check) and so cost them virtually nothing, which is why you get 1 billion free on contract.

I guess you could do a Virgin/Tesco, and just resell data-only SIMs from the carriers. That means you're acting as a reseller (+cost) without being able to take advantage of the savings inherent in dismantling the GSM portion of your network.

How do iPad 3G SIMs work? Are they traditional SIMs and the fact they have a phone number etc is totally ignored? Kindles, too.

If you can have a phone number in an iPad 3G, why has someone not reverse engineered it into a phone already?

Just because it's a GSM SIM with a phone number doesn't mean it has an active telephony service on it.

Even more so, I'm fairly sure they don't have phone numbers. It's data provision only. Don't forget that cell networks are all VOIP these days anyway, the telephony layer is just slathered over the underlying data layer at the edge of the network and in a core routing table of numbers-to-cell-locations.

No, I meant "unless" - are we talking about something different, maybe?

When you don't have a PIN (well, Passcode Lock by iPhone terminology) set up, there's no facility to make an emergency call from the lock-screen.

When you do have the Passcode Lock set up, there's an Emergency Call button on the passcode keypad.

//fake edit: Aaah, you're talking about when there's no SIM in the phone and you have the "slide for emergency" button on the bottom or something like that, right?

Oh I seeeeeee. Yes, OK, you're correct (I was wandering off topic talking about the SIMless thing).

Good detailed overview of iMessage: http://www.9to5mac.com/71121/imessage-w ... d-to-know/

So in that case, the 3G iPad has the same carrier interaction that I'm talking about. Put skype on it, and it's effectively exactly what I'm talking about, but it just isn't sold as a 'phone'.

So not that far-fetched an idea?

Yes. This is also true of the plans used for Wifi hotspots. But the carriers are very careful about what they do and don't support. If you don't believe me, find one that'll sell you a similar £15-per-month data-only SIM to go in an iPhone.

I preferred the SMD.

My Blackberry seems to connect over UMA... which is nice. Yet it doesn't support a Skype client pew

EDIT.. of that doesn't aid in the slightest does it. Just pointing out that we are pretty much data orientated mobile wise... well getting there and the base station can't handle massive volumes of data anyway.

oh I and prefer DVDA

So... wireless syncing, then.

Does this mean that I could buy myself an iPod touch, slap iOS 5 on it, leave it permanently plugged into the car stereo, and have it automatically sync updates to my music library whenever it comes in range of my house?

Because that would be fucking ace.

I can do that with my phone. Or I could, if I could actually ever park outside my house.

Not sure. The iCloud backup bit only happens when you are plugged into the mains, to prevent battery drain, but I haven't seen anyone specifically discuss how wireless syncing works. It'd probably need a manual start, I'd imagine; I'm not sure I want a battery powered device to be firing up the wifi radio whenever it wants.

On the other hand, if you sign the iPod into iCloud, music purchases you buy through iTunes (and if you pay $25 for iTunes Match, ones you also rip/download) will automatically load onto the device when it comes within range anyway. You don't need your computer in the house to be switched on for that. This is probably more efficient, as it just pushes the song itself and doesn't piss about with iTunes metadata.