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SMS vs. E-mail?
Chase asks: "I have a Motorola I85s (Java phones rock!). The issue I've run into is that from what I've been able to find out, most phones overseas (I'm in the US) support SMS to send text messages between mobile devices. Also alot of two-way devices are now popping up in the US. Nextel (my service provider) only lets me use SMS to other Nextel customers. Their two messaging service is e-mail based. So I end up using a web site to send SMS messages to my friends overseas but we'd really like to send directly each others phones. Is this just a problem with Nextel or do all mobile phone companies in the US have this issue? Are most of the current crop of two-way devices coming out in the US email based, SMS, or something else?"
"All of you anti-Microsoft people would probably like to know that if you have Nextels national plan and a I85s you get the ability to send and recieve from a Hotmail or MSN account for free. I'm paying $5 a month for the regular email support. I read something about MSN only supporting non-standard protocols for email, do we also have to worry about Microsoft messing with moble messaging? (and yes, I have a Passport option on my phone)"
Moving from Australia to the US has been a big surprise for me, given that the US is supposed to be benefitting from a more open market in telecommunications.
In Australia I was paying about US$5 per month for a mobile phone, not paying to receive calls and paying about US$0.25/min for outgoing calls. Given that I don't use the phone that much I was more than happy with that price. I could go anywhere in Australia with that phone and have coverage - all for that one price. I took that phone to Italy and STILL had coverage without even talking to a company in Italy.
Coming to the US, I find it impossible to get a phone for less than SIX TIMES that price, and find that I can't go to Europe or anywhere and expect to get coverage without getting a totally new phone. I even find that I have to pay for incoming calls. No way in hell I'm going to get a phone here from any company. I don't care - the telcos here just don't have any idea what is possible.
The "free market" has screwed people in the US so badly that they don't even notice it any more. Even the cost of land lines is higher, lower quality and so hideously complex in the billing that it is absolutely impossible to figure out who you are paying for what.
To any American who thinks they have it good, think again. The telcos are screwing you for at least 2 to 3 times what you would pay for a BETTER service in any other country.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
... which should answer you question quite nicely.
To be precise, networks make use of something called as SMS center as the gateway. This element in the network acts as a router for all messages within the network. So, to send a message, a phone will first send it to the SMS center. The SMS center will then forward it to the recipient. Even if you are sending SMS within the network, it will still be routed via the SMS center.
The SMS center is addressed as just as any other cellphone in your network. You can find the number in the network settings of your phone.
Now, the interesting part. For GSM, the interface between the SMS center and the rest of the network is not standardized (GSM standards say that its 'out of scope'). That means your operators can choose whatever they want as the interface between the mobile network and the SMS center. Typically, this interface will be TCP/IP, or IPX or X.25 or SS7. Usually, the vendors who provide the equipment to the operators suggest an interface and the operators go along.
For U.S. based standards, there is a similar concept. Again, the interface can be TCP/IP or IPX or X.25 or SS7.
However, the standards for both GSM and the CDMA/TDMA/AMPS don't talk anything about how the SMS center should talk to the rest of the world. This means talking to some other SMS center of any other operator, or some server on the Internet is not 'in scope'. Since the standards don't talk of any such connectivity, the vendors (Big Guys like Nokia, Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel, Seimens, Motorola etc. ) don't have to build SMS centers with external interfaces to be standards compliant. For GSM, the internal interface to the network is a must but external is 'out of scope'. Typically, there is an extra charge for giving the external interface, and so many operators don't go for the equipment. That's why, many operators don't have external connectivity and you end up sending SMS to only people in your network. In the U.S. standards, SMS is a relatively new phenomenon. Many networks haven't had to upgrade to the latest specs, and so there isn't any SMS.
Taking this issue further, a lot of the GSM operators in Europe make money by allowing people to 'roam' between networks. Therefore, it makes business sense to provide connectivity (SMS/roaming). However, in the U.S. the operators make money mainly from airtime. So, there isn't much incentive to provide roaming or interconnectivity between networks. The end result, you are stuck with either not having SMS or only able to sent it within your network. As far as the rest of the world goes, the folks with GSM have SMS as per standards with external connectivity an optional feature, and the CDMA/TDMA folks depend on the 'age' of their networks.
All of Europe, Australia, and most of the rest of the world use GSM, which has had SMS as a standard feature since its inception. So pretty much every handset has had SMS MO (mobile originated) and MT (mobile terminated) support since the mid 90s.
When the networks first offered SMS MO in Australia there was no carrier interoperability - you could only SMS people with the same carrier. Eventually it became more and more popular and the carriers signed interconnect agreements. Some Austrlian networks can't SMS international networks but it all depends on their interconnect and roaming agreements.
The US, with its mix of different standards and extensive Analog network is a different story. CDMA and TDMA now have SMS MO support, but I don't believe SMS MO was part of the original implementation. So there isn't extensive SMS MO support in existing handsets. Some providers like Sprint are using WAP to implement SMS MO!
There isn't enough demand to warrant SMS interconnect agreements, there's no single standard, and from a marketing point of view it's almost a reason to stick with the same network as your friends. In Australia, your phone number prefix indicates that it's both a mobile phone, and which network you subscribe to. So before there was interconnect, you could still tell if you could SMS someone based on their phone number. In the US, it's not obvious from the phone number whether your SMS will make it to its recipient, or just end up in a black hole.
Finally, US cellphone airtime pricing is just time based - there isn't usually a flagfall for originating a call. So it's not really a cost saving to SMS someone instead of calling them, as it is in other parts of the world.
Things will get more consistent as Cingular and AT&T migrate to GSM, but until there are business reasons to support SMS interconnect, the networks in the US will be slow to move.