We're an SMS-first startup in Pakistan since 2009 doing a billion+ SMS every month (pringit.com). Supporting SMS is key considering 120M cellphone users and 25M

We're an SMS-first startup in Pakistan since 2009 doing a billion+ SMS every month (pringit.com). Supporting SMS is key considering 120M cellphone users and 25M internet users. The blogpost is well meaning but its certainly wrong/naive about a number of things: 1. You don't bypass bandwidth and latency issues; you're a hostage to them. Want to get more SMS/sec capacity? Well, you need to renegotiate your terms with each mobile partner. If you have a shortcode, you can't negotiate because the operators own the codes, the tariff and the capacity and you have no alternative. Contrast this with internet bandwith which is 1,000x cheaper and easier to get a hold of. 2. Similarly, you don't "Own the network", you are at the mercy of your mobile operator who has near absolute control. The operator is a party in your commercial decisions, on your rev-share model, on your product behaviour (so it doesn't compete with existing services/investments), bandwith etc. 3. There is no rich media. MMS is a different beast altogether and has very very tiny adaption (<10% of mobile internet users). That being said, there are 6Billion mobile users and 2.2Billion internet users. This gulf will exist for a long time to come and it is unfair to limit innovation, information and access to just internet users and in that, the article is spot on. My company specifically focuses on creating a social network that covers both these spectrums in a way that doesn't exclude non-internet users from the national debate and the only that is possible is via SMS.