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World's First SMS Text Messaging May Fade Soon
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Dec 04, 2001 04:44 AM
from the power-and-intimacy-of-pocket-calculators dept.
from the power-and-intimacy-of-pocket-calculators dept.
Infractor writes: "UK Mobile provider Orange has moved to pull the plug on the world's first ever text message community -- Locust Cellular
Linux hacker Jon Anderson built the service, similar to wireless email and IRC chat back in 1996. A student Linux project, accidently became the first service to offer interactive text message facilities on this UK network. After Locust's forced closure was announced to its members, a huge campaign has been organised by the subscribers to draw attention to the incredible value which has been created by this unique SMS community." (There's more below.)
"Hundreds of personal letters and testimonials have already been posted on the community action site which is at SaveLocust.org -- This site also has an expose on what is described as 'Orange's Hypocrisy' over claims that it is launching a competitive service to Locust. An article has already appeared on TheRegister.co.uk
For the UK, this is a unique social phenomena, driven by the power and intimacy of text messaging. Please review the evidence for yourself. This community shows what technology can really do in the wireless world. Locust still runs on good ole Linux 2.0.33 -- if it aint broke ... :)"
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World's First SMS Text Messaging May Fade Soon
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This was always a good service (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be a great shame to lose it. Last time it was under threat was when Orange changed from a flat monthly fee for SMS (2 quid a month, unlimited SMS) to a charge-per-SMS (0.05 GBP per message). A deal was struck then that kept Locust online.
It will be a sad day if it shuts - genuine innovation and genuine value-for-money
SMS messaging (Score:2, Informative)
Let's look at the facts here... (Score:5, Informative)
Locust's Terms and Conditions say include the statement that Locust reserves the right to change price plans or service features at any time if required, yet when Orange exercise the same right, they start kicking and screaming.
There are other mobile phone network operators in the UK - Vodafone, Cellnet, One2One. Why doesn't Locust talk to one of them with a view to switching providers?
I'm sorry, but I don't really see what the big deal is here. Seems to be another case of people wanting something without having to pay for it, both in terms of the disgruntled Locust users, and the people who profit from it.
Re:Let's look at the facts here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, billing is viable if it's either flat-rate, in advance (like locust currently is), or if you're huge (like Orange). So what Orange are *actually* saying is that they just aren't interested in small operations: unless you can afford a billing system they don't care.
This is actually very pertinent to the net: the reason the net as we know it today exists is because people could do small-scale experiments without having to worry about billing. You could write a system to send messages from one machine to another without having to stress away about charging per message, and suddenly you've invented email or news, and later on you could invent some crappy little SGML-based networked hypertext system and arrogantly call it the `world wide web' when it only ran at CERN anyway, and you could do these kinds of experiments because you weren't getting billed per packet, and so you didn't have to worry about passing on that cost to the users. An argument that's often heard in the UK is that the net took off better in the US because *local calls are free*.
The moment you have to worry about billing you're in an entirely different place. You have to make business cases and worry about risk of default. Worst of all you have to have a billing system which means nightmare database hell and lots of paper and so on. If your basic transaction is very small, like an SMS or an email, or a packet, you stand a serious chance of your costs being completely dominated by the billing overhead. I don't know the figures for telcos but I bet a really large chunk of their profit is eaten by the billing system.
I think there's really a lot of evidence that having to worry about billing simply stifles a lot of innovation. Of course, Orange can say `well, so what?', and that is their right. But I think its a catastrophically dumb decision, because they (and the other telcos) really need to foster innovation, because no one
really has much idea where to go next. They've kind of done voice, since everyone now has a mobile phone (maybe not yet in the US, but Europe is pretty saturated). SMS was this thing that no-one saw coming that has been hugely successful, but it works fine on 2G networks. So they've now spent enormous money on 3G and they really have no idea what to do with it - video is not going to be that interesting, neither is the web, and no one knows what is, really).
But they can't see this - they're so panic stricken because they've spent this huge amount of money, that they are obsessing away about making everything they do profitable and trying to rake in money from SMS traffic (which, really, must be a big money earner: people send billions and billions of SMSs), instead of actually thinking a bit and allowing some lunatic in a basement to play with some idea without having to buy Oracle to do the billing. Of course they probably don't want to allow a huge company to do this, but that's easily arranged by just throttling the bandwidth that Locust (say) can have: then they can't grow beyond an experiment.
What is saddest of all is that they are missing a huge trick here. The problem is that billing costs don't scale down. But the telcos already have a billing system, they are large so the costs aren't too bad, and they have this really big stick to beat their customers with: pay up or we cut off your phone. So the obvious thing for them to do is to get into bed with the little innovative people to provide a billing service, which they can do at small extra cost, and which would enable innovation to procede without the crippling overhead. Even better, you only get the service if you're a customer of the telco concerned, because they need to be able to bill you, so you probably move your phone to them too. This probably isn't right for locust-as-it-stands, but some kind of semi-locust type thing could do this, if only the telcos had half a brain between them.
--tim
Mobile ICQ (Score:1, Insightful)
What is great about ICQ is you catch up with someone when you may not have even considered calling them ( you just see them on). THis would be great if extented to mobiles and you always got a list of your friends (and otherwise) that had their mobiles turned on.
Is locust doomed anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Analogy to road infrastructure ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that they did the conomic analysis and showed that there was a net savings in petrol consumption and driver's time. But in order for them to pay for building the new infrastructure, they had to convince motorists that there was no longer a free-ride. The problem is that motorists only saw the daily toll charges and not the weekly savings in petrol/time. Not to mention that very little advance warning was given to changing the road access. You can probably guess the PR fallout resulting from this
Sooner or later a similar scenario will happen with communications networks as they reach the limits of scaiability and in order to transition to a more efficient/lower cost/reduced maintenance system, they need to convince people of the benefits of switching This usually requires changing their usage patterns. Unfortunately aggressive telco upstarts don't always have the diplomatic skills to address customer's expectations. Pricing is a particularly sensitive point as there may be incredible customer acquisition costs or hidden cross-subsidies that distort the cost structure.
There has probably been some over-investments in network infrastructure that the current recession is revealing. As Warrne Buffett says, it's only when the tide goes out that you see who's swimming naked. Companies that pass the buck (literally) for their corporate mistakes are going to have a hard time keeping onto their customer base and will have to either swallow the losses (and shock horror forfeit the CEO bonuses/options) or else try and merge to gain monopoly pricing power and justify their executive packages. While some people may decry the double-sided nature of telcos and Wall Street, hopefully the survivors will be more sensitive to their users's needs.
LL
Not that Jon Anderson... (Score:2, Informative)
A bit of history (Score:5, Informative)
It sprang up out of Orange's original free SMS service. Back in the days when SMS was hardly ever used and it was impossible to SMS across competing phone networks Orange offered, for £2.50 per month, SMS sending and receiving with no charges per message - and they didn't charge the monthly fee either.
This was on the basis that Orange hadn't perfected the system and that later on they would start to charge for the service - something that was told to everyone who signed up. Because of this Locust was able to start using very basic technology (A unix box and a phone with a serial cable) and reasonable low overheads.
When Orange started charging for Text messages they offered Text1500, a bulk text message service for £60 per month which offered unlimited messages.
At this rate, with Locust sending out 300,000 messages per month it was costing them about £0.0002 per message for the over the air portion. This compares very favourable to the £0.02 that other SMS sending services charge.
Companies today, more so with the economy slowing, are trying to make more money out of all of their subscribers and this is just one way that Orange have found to try and do that.
Also of note is that the same people as run Locust offer commercial SMS services run "properly" (Linked to mobile networks rather than using a mobile phone on a PC).
This is not a WAP portal (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? The WAP portal is where the Euro providers really want their subscribers to go for information, news, etc. GPRS will give WAP some semblance of usability, after the initial flop, and many Euro providers, including the one I work for, have invested millions in their portal offerings. The old style SMS messaging services like this one are OK, as long as you agree to pay for the messages they send you, but anything that detracts from the portal is definitely not on the A-list.
Bottom line, the providers gotta pay down the G3 licenses, and SMS (eventually packetized SMS) is probably the best way to "migrate" the population slowly into G3 without losing the SMS-crazed kids who pay the bills.
Great company (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course now I have broadband at home and fat pipes at work I don't need this anymore, but back then it was a real boon.
I guess what I'm saying is that these guys offered a real innovative service which I was really grateful for, and I wish them the best in the future.
All free services are coming to an end... (Score:1, Insightful)
Thanx France Telecom ! (Score:1)
That bullshit company has always had a very bad policy towards SMS. You always had to pay to use Itineris, and now Orange SMS, including when using the web-sms gateway (it was only free when it was in beta stage, years ago).
It's the only phone company that charges for SMS sent from the web in France (SFR is 100% free, Bouygues requires free registration). They're the reason why SMS is so week in France.
I don't understand why this state-owned company is keeping trying to make money using unfair monopolistic attitude. It should be illegal...
No thanks, France Telecom (Score:2)
When do these companies learn that I just don't want to spend more than, say $20 per month on my phone? I am not going to use WAP if that's going to cost more. Or I-Mode (whatever it is) or all those lame expensive services. I love to improve my life with better technology, but this is something else. To misquote their advertisements: the only thing that's easy to understand about telecom is that they want all my money.
Have any uk peeps had issues sending SMS from icq? (Score:1)
Mobile operators finally realise value of SMS (Score:1)
So in this case they could at least grandfather Locust's original tariff IMO.
There is nothing more annoying than... (Score:1)
In the UK, SMS is an addiction for kids. Obviousely the immaturity level at this age shows that they don't understand that having an entire conversation over SMS will in fact take them 10 times as long and cost them 10 times as much as just picking up the phone and saying what they have to say in a few seconds. Some^H^H^H^HMost People need to start using this technology for it's proper purpose.. beep beep beep..
I certainly wouldn't mind seeing this locust chat/sms service go
It had to come (Score:3, Interesting)
One-2-One Email to SMS Service (Score:1)
If you changed your password, they would send you a message saying password changed and charge you 10pence for that message, if someone send you junk email, you could be charged upto 90pence as the message would be separated in to 9 Text messages and sent to your phone.
It looks like Orange want to introduce a similar service, and for the average mobile user it is just not feasible.
Always Connected (Score:1)
I wouldn't want to connect everytime just to listen.. or be restricted so much in how I can use the music... eg, swapping songs onto the laptop before taking a journey...
Whoops (Score:1)
Re:Linux reality (Score:1)
Just my $0.05,
N.