US Mobile Subscribers Now Over 243 million, Sending 1 billion SMS per Day

As the opening keynote speaker at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment show, Steve Largent, CTIA President, reported from his recently released semi-annual report on the US mobile market, that there are now 243.4 million mobile subscribers in the US, which represents 81% of the population.

Texting continues to rise. Users sent 28.8 billion SMS in June, and are now sending more than 1 billion text messages per day.

Also, revenues from wireless data service for first half of 2007 rose to $10.5 billion, a 63 percent increase over the first half of 2006. Consumers are spending more on non-voice services, as wireless data revenues now amount to 15.5 percent of all wireless service revenues.

You can view selected stats from the report here.

Opinion: Wireless Carriers and Innovation

Here is a great article to read by the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg before you head out to the the CTIA conference in San Francisco tomorrow. Carry his thoughts with you while your attend the many presentations. Viva la revolution!

$10,000 U.S. Cellular Penalties

U.S. Cellular Corporation is revising its penalties in case of failure by a content provider to adhere to the carrier's rules and regulations, in following 2 areas:

1. A content provider is prohibited from including or transmitting any Binary Content as part of a message unless expressly permitted by the carrier in writing. For each such breach, the content provider is liable for liquidated damages of $10,000. Binary Content is defined as anything that is not 7bit ASCII text. This includes 8bit text, 16bit text, Wap Push messages, MMS messages, SMS Wakeups, vCard, vCal, etc.

   
   

2. A content provider needs to adhere to the Mobile Marketing Association's 'Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services'. For each material breach of such guidelines, the content provider will be liable for liquidated damages of $10,000.

AT&T Disconnecting non-SRM compliant premium subscription services

AT&T has alerted us that they will start disconnecting all short codes that run premium subscription campaigns and are not using AT&T's Subscription and Refund Management (SRM) Platform. AT&T will typically not give any warning before disconnecting a particular code.

Alltel price cap and subscription periods

Effective immediately, Alltel is reducing the maximum per message premium price to $9.99. Higher per message prices can be approved on a case-by-case basis but content providers will need to demonstrate the value of the content they'll provide. Also, going forward, Alltel will limit subscription periods to monthly only. Daily and weekly subscriptions are no longer allowed. Existing campaigns will be grandfathered in and won't need to change, but all new campaigns need to adhere to these new policies.

AT&T Zero Rate Policy Change (UPDATED)

AT&T requires the use of 'zero rated' messages (ie. messages that are free to the end user) for all responses to HELP and STOP requests. These responses arrive on the consumer's cell phone via an 11-digit short code provided by AT&T.

AT&T is making two changes to aforementioned policy:

1. The 11-digit short code is replaced by a 4 digit short code. The short code number is 1006.
   
2. Not only responses to HELP and STOP requests need to be zero-rated, but also subscription confirmation and subscription reminder messages.
   

In addition to these changes, AT&T requires that all subscription confirmation messages contain a toll-free technical support number, website address, or AT&T customer support number. Refunds and cancellations should ONLY be processed using AT&T's SRM system.

ReminderConnection customers need to ensure that all subscription confirmation and reminder messages are sent with 'price=-1', which will automatically trigger the zero-rate tariff and 4 digit short code on AT&T's network.

UPDATE (10/1/2007): We were informed today to hold off on the implementation of this new policy. Because of consumer litigation, AT&T felt it was necessary to change the policy, and that hasn't changed. So we do expect this new policy to be implemented some time in the future. Stay tuned for more info.

AT&T Delays implementation of OPPC

As previously reported here, AT&T is preparing to roll-out phase 2 of their subscription management system. It's called OPPC which stands for Off-Portal Purchasing Control. The basic idea is that AT&T will take over the responsibility for handling the double opt-in consumer registration process.

AT&T has just announced that it would delay the roll-out of OPPC until Q1 2008. This will give content providers extra time to test their implementation and integration with the OPPC system during Q4 2007. AT&T stresses that the delay does not signal a reduced commitment to switch over to the OPPC system. On the contrary, AT&T intends to invest even more time and effort in making sure that the OPPC platform is successfully rolled out.