SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

15 years!!!! SMS has become a teenager.

I don’t mean to remark SMS qualities. It has already been done plenty of times. I want to criticize comment what I call the “swiss army knife” of mobile operator excuses.

SMS is one of the greatest success stories in mobile industry. Forget about GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA <put-here-your-preferred-technology>. SMS is the one and only. It’s incredible what has been achieved with just a signaling message (for those that didn’t know it, yest, an SMS is just an SS7 protocol message). SMS has been so successful, that it has been adopted as the default comparison for every service launched by mobile operators.

The situation could be as follows:

A – Hey!!! I have created a brand new service for our great mobile operator company.

B – What do you mean? What do your service do?

A – Well, It allows you to smoke a virtual cigarrette from your mobile phone.

B – Do you really think that somebody would use that service? It sounds stupid.

A – Yeah, the same was said about SMS.

Believe me, after working for 5 years in a mobile operator, I’ve suffered this kind of situation several times.

I think that this a direct consequence of lack of fresh ideas in Mobile Operators. They look at Internet based companies with great envy, as long as mobile operators are not able to create such successful services. They are tied to the past, to those times that everything was putting the hand’s palm to receive money from customers, most times offering a poor service. Mobile operators have been stucked for long years thinking that voice was all they need to earn money. Big mistake my friends. Things have chaged.

Anyway, Happy Birthday SMS!!! I wish you another 15 years of success.

What do you think about this? Do you think that mobile operators will find a new SMS-like service? (in terms of economical success)