Termination Fees
Many Mobile
Network Operators (MNO) charge to deliver an SMS message.
This is known as a Termination Fee. If a message starts
on one network but is delivered by another MNO then
the MNO that delivers the message charges the first
MNO and that MNO charges the person who originally
sent the message.
The average Termination Fee is about
US$ 0.07 (7 cents) but it varies with some MNO charging
as much
as US$
0.15 (15 cents). If an MNO is charging a 7 cents Termination
Fee then this sets an absolute lower limit for the
price of an SMS delivered to a handset on that MNOs
network from another MNO. For example SFR in France
charge € 0.05 and anyone who offers to deliver
messages to SFR through legitimate routes must charge
more than € 0.05 to do so.
Setting up the charging agreements and collecting
the Termination Fees takes quite a lot of effort for
an MNO so they often accept messages from smaller MNOs
without collecting a Termination Fee. This is the back
door that lets some suppliers deliver messages for
less than the Termination Fee.
Many MNO's monitor their traffic and
if they detect a large volume of traffic coming from
another MNO with
whom they do not have an agreement in place then they
may block that traffic briefly - or until a formal
arrangement is in place.
Chasing low prices
This is a game of "cat and mouse".
Typically an entrepreneur in Africa, India or the Far
East finds that he can
get messages through a local operator to some major
European MNO. They then email suppliers like ourselves
offering incredibly cheap prices. If we sign up we
get a cheap service for a few months until the route
gets blocked. By that time another entrepreneur will
have discovered another route. And so it goes on.
Using these entrepreneurs has its problems though.
They seldom have effective back-up routes or much experience
of handling SMS traffic. The resulting service is usually
unreliable. It may be fine for a few weeks and then
suddenly we have a 7 hour outage and / or a lot of
"lost" messages.
Free SMS
There are many companies that offer
free SMS services including www.crazysms.com www.sms.ac
www.cbfsms.com www.textmefree.com.
Please visit their sites to understand what they offer
and please keep our contact details in case you need
a
better service.
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