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Aside on SMS: Armchair economists like to discuss SMS as an example of oligopolies gone bad, but that doesn't pass the smell test. Telephone competition is sub
by cynicalkane 14y ago
Aside on SMS:
Armchair economists like to discuss SMS as an example of oligopolies gone bad, but that doesn't pass the smell test. Telephone competition is suboptimal but SMS is uniquely bad in its outcomes; they've done a much better job on all other forms of data. Furthermore, costs vary from place to place but by all accounts SMS is still very expensive worldwide.
Well, it happens that SMS is a technical hack; the data payloads are snuck into the control channel. The bandwidth in this channel is very scarce. The message could be re-routed over the data network, but the cross-carrier costs are still expensive because the receiving phone might have to use the old implemnetation.
- revelation 14y agoThats obviously a no-starter. Its not expensive because its "snuck into the control channel", which is only partially true. If that was the case and it would be immensely expensive to transport data that way, there would be a technical solution in no time. Remember that before SMS, most payload was sounds, voice communication. Even with codecs that is still much more bandwidth intensive. And don't even get started with routing voice cross-carrier with minimal latency; atleast with SMS you can still temporarily hold them while you wait for capacity to free up.
- cynicalkane 14y agoWhat's funny is that the market has tried to solve it. The first cell phone I ever got offered low-cost AIM. My work BlackBerry has a free messenger app. But it turns out people like sending messages to a phone number, any phone number, and don't care for using multiple ways to text. So SMS is the only universal standard for this. Modern phones could re-route the data to save money but the receiving phone might still use the old protocol. It's a literal "network effect".
- fosk 14y agoAbstraction is the right answer. Just send a message, and let the application layer figure out the right transport to make it readable on the final device.
- lloeki 14y agoThat may be the Messages.app (on iOS and even more on Mac) plan. I sure wish iMessage and BBM were made interoperable via some well-defined bridge standard.
- simonh 14y ago>Modern phones could re-route the data to save money but the receiving phone might still use the old protocol. The iPhone messages app does exactly that. It first tries to send the message via Apple, with fallback to SMS if either the remote phone isn't an iPhone or if it can't establish a connection to it immediately.
- peter_l_downs 14y agoI was going to ask "Source?" but decided to look it up for myself. For anyone else reading this: cynicalkane is right, sms messages "travel on the SS7 network in tandem with voice call signaling traffic" [0]. For a great overview, read this HowStuffWorks article [1]. [0] http://www.ncs.gov/library/tech_bulletins/2003/tib_03-2.pdf http://www.ncs.gov/library/tech_bulletins/2003/tib_03-2.pdf (this whole bulletin is pretty interesting: it discusses the fact that SMS service is often maintained even while voice service is down, such as on September 11th 2001). [1] http://computer.howstuffworks.com/e-mail-messaging/sms.htm http://computer.howstuffworks.com/e-mail-messaging/sms.htm
- malkarouri 14y agoIs that still valid? I mean, after GPRS, MMS and various technologies in this area it might not be as bad as originally implemented.
- alttab 14y agoIt's still valid like XP is still valid. Legacy is called legacy for a reason.
- sopooneo 14y agoMMS just works by sending an SMS message to the receiving phone with a url pointing to a stored copy of whatever the original message payload was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service#Technical_description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service#Te...