
Twitter Kills SMS in Canada - qhoxie
http://gigaom.com/2008/11/26/twitter-kills-sms-in-canada/
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mseebach
Title is quite misleading. I'd expected a (hyperbole) story about how tel-com
SMS revenue in Canada is down because people use Twitter over data instead.

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trickjarrett
I didn't find it misleading at all, but after you comment I can see how it can
be misread.

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thwarted
I didn't find it misleading either, especially considering that twitter
killing features is par for the course. Gotta consider things in context. If
it was about nearly anyone else, it would be about adding features.

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iigs
My first reaction to this was "why would the carriers strangle their business
this way?". You'd think that they'd want to encourage innovation to increase
consumption of high margin features like SMS.

It occurs to me after a moment of thought that the farther these devices get
from voice, the closer they get to straight IP connected data devices, which
is a comparatively low margin future.

I can say that at no point do I _desire_ to use SMS, just that it's convenient
compared to the web experience on the typical handset. The sooner devices do
IP well the better as far as I'm concerned.

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teuobk
I'm probably missing something, but this seems like an opportunity for Twitter
to charge for a premium service...

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there
so you have to pay twitter for the service and then pay your cell provider
again per message? who would sign up for that?

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trezor
Who on earth pays to receive SMSes or calls for that matter?

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ovi256
US citizens do. Yeah, I know, the mind boggles. Boggles, I tell you.

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potatolicious
I find it amusing that the article quotes Jim Prentice - probably the crony-
est corporate lap-dog in Canadian politics. Telecom in Canada is _really,
really_ broken, and Jim Prentice keeps preaching about the choice in the free
market, despite the fact that there are only _two_ monopolies to choose from
(Telus and Bell are the same entity for all intents and purposes, and then
there's Rogers), who both share the exact same pricing structure, almost down
to the penny.

The CRTC (similar to the FCC in the US) mandated that the major telcos must
provide their DSL lines at a wholesale rate to 3rd party ISPs, which worked
wonders - except the third parties managed to undercut the existing player's
price, with better service. The answer to this was to heavily throttle 3rd
party lines, and Prentice will not do jack squat about it.

Canada would be a much better place if that slimebag is out of a job.

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ionfish
When they stopped the SMS service in the UK I cared for all of the five
minutes until I got my iPhone. Obviously in the short term this is a major
loss of functionality for a lot of people, but give it a couple of years and,
if we're all still using Twitter, no one will care too much about SMS
integration, because the real web will be everywhere.

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sielskr
At what price though? The cheapest plan authorized by Apple that works with an
iPhone in the U.S. costs $70 a month.

