

Does it cost twitter to receive SMS? - peternicholls

Just trying to get my head around twitter's SMS costs. I know it costs to send them but is it costing them each time they receive one?<p>Thanks HN
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xg
It depends, but the answer is probably not. Most people operate shortcodes
through an aggregator (OpenMarket, mBlox, Ericson IPX) that has direct binds
to all the telecom carriers in a given country.

For the most part, aggregators charge a monthly fee usually tied somewhat to
system throughput. For example, OpenMarket charges $1500/mo for 10 messages
per second outgoing and $20,000/mo for 100 messages per second.

On top of that, they charge for messaging. Rack rate in the US is often $.035
outgoing and $.005 incoming. At Twitter's scale, they're probably paying a
fraction of a penny per outgoing message and have most incoming fees waived.
Some of that is carrier specific however. T-Mobile often doesn't waive the
incoming message fees.

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oscardelben
No, there are special plans for that, but also in a lot of countries (Italy
for example) we never pay for receive sms or calls, so they could have a
foreign plan (very common). Anyway, they may have a server that handle the
traffic of the sms, and that is costing money for sure

