JOHANNNESBURG, South Africa—South African mobile network operator MTN reported that it suspended its free PC-to-mobile short message service (SMS) on Mtnsms.com following an unsustainable third-party cost increase. A company spokesman said the site would be redesigned and relaunched as a fee-based service in the near future.
Irene Charnley, commercial director at M-Cell, the parent company of mtnsms.com’s developer, Airborn said, “Mntsms.com now has to pay Telkom approximately 9 cents for the SS7 signaling link on each message sent internationally. With peaks of 90 million messages a month in the last year, this new development, although not unexpected, makes our current business model unsustainable.”
The free service, which had grown into the world’s largest SMS community, will soon be relaunched under a financially sustainable, fee-based business model powered by Two Way Instant Short Text (TWIST) technology. The product has been developed by Airborn and was one of the first engines in the world to allow two-way messaging between PCs and mobiles.
“The Internet is evolving from free to fee, and we have reached a point where we have to follow suit,” said Charnley.
She expressed regret at the temporary closure of the service that connected 7 million people around the world, but said it had always been a proof-of-concept project. “We will now take mtnsms.com to its next level of development by using its tried and tested technology to create a bigger and better revenue-generating service. Full details will be released in early April,” she added.
