SMS Can Lead to Big Fines

Greece's telecoms watchdog yesterday slapped an unusually large 1-million-euro fine on each of the country's three largest mobile phone operators after finding them guilty of fixing prices for text messaging.
The Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT) imposed the fine, which is one of the largest of its kind, after deciding that the three firms had been breaking competition rules for almost a year.
«The identical price increases for short message services (SMS) decided and implemented by Cosmote, Tim Hellas and Vodafone since the spring of 2005 constitute price-fixing and are in breach of free competition rules,» EETT said in a statement.
The commission's verdict was reached by a majority decision after a lengthy and acrimonious session.
The three companies did not comment on the watchdog's decision, saying they wanted to study the ruling in full. The firms have the right to appeal EETT's decision.
At almost the same time last April, the telecoms companies all increased the price of sending an SMS message by 7 percent (to 0.09 euro) for contract customers.
This has raised questions about the role of the Competition Commission (CC), to which the mobile phone companies were initially referred to. The commission passed the matter onto the EETT but doubts have been raised about how effective the CC is at tackling market irregularities, such as price fixing and cartels.

SendMyTxt Free SMS

The original FMTxt solution provided radio stations with access to a five-digit shortcode, with listeners texting a memorable number - and having their message delivered straight to the email inbox at the radio station''s studio. Now SendMyTxt have introduced a whole range of new services to the portfolio including easy to setup competition and poll text services, a ''text chat'' service for radio station websites, plus a unique ''now playing'' information service that allows listeners to find out what song a radio station is currently playing.In addition, SendMyTxt is offering an easy route into the mobile content market, offering broadcasters a ''white label'' ringtone, nametones, logos and games website with no outlay and generous revenue share.The services in the FMTxt portfolio are completely free, with no set up charges, monthly charges or equipment to buy. SendMyTxt will set up and maintain mobile operator connections, keywords and services on the radio's behalf. Each text message that a listener sends to your station costs them twenty-five pence, plus their usual network provider charge (a maximum of ten pence). The radio station receives a share of this revenue - between seven and ten pence, depending on the mobile network and monthly volume of messages. SendMyTxt Director, Tony Coyne, says "After the huge success of our original FMTxt product we decided to give radio stations more ways to interact via text with their listeners. Having over ten years UK radio industry experience amongst our team, we knew that radio stations are always looking for a new way to both increase audience and also revenue - which is why our new range of FMTxt services are free to radio stations, and gives them a new income stream - as well as enabling the station to market to existing and new mobile-enabled listeners via text."

British Company to Launch SMS Test and Monitoring System At CTIA Wireless 2006

An SMS test and monitoring system that allows the scheduling of regular text message transmission between parts of the network is to be launched at CTIA Wireless 2006 by British company Smith Myers Communications (1).To help pinpoint equipment faults or poor performance due to heavy network load, the system logs transmission times and lost messages. Tests can be carried out on a single network, across networks or as a means of comparing performance with competitors.Also on show will be a GSM air-interface protocol analyser that provides a detailed breakdown of the communications between a GSM base station and a mobile phone. It allows equipment developers and network operators to analyse the performance of equipment from different manufacturers and trace faults that lead to lost calls or poor performance.