Congrats on launching this! I've been looking into using SMS as a delivery mechanism for a while now, for different reasons. Access to, for example, medical information through SMS could be immensely helpful in the developing world.
Two questions that made me stumble were:
- how does the pricing work out? In my research, all SMS services were way too expensive to work at scale, especially with sending to the developing world, Africa etc. You use Twillio, and for developing countries it's mostly 0.01$/message over a local number, but no option to buy a local number.
- what is the difference between land coverage of cellular networks vs. EDGE/3G networks in the developing world? Does it make sense to focus on SMS to increase reach?
Would appreciate what you guys or anyone else has found out about this.
Coverage wise, I don't know how much it is in places like Africa. I have personal experience in India with a smartphone, no internet, and cell connection. Stefan also had this issue on the bus from Chicago (?) to MHacks (Ann Arbor), which was a 9 hour trip without 4g. A lot of more rural areas of America have bad data coverage too. I like to go camping, and I see this pattern a lot.
We've spent a significant amount of money already in the first couple of hours. We really need your support! If you guys could help us out on Tilt, that would be awesome! We also have a Teespring campaign going!
Two questions that made me stumble were:
- how does the pricing work out? In my research, all SMS services were way too expensive to work at scale, especially with sending to the developing world, Africa etc. You use Twillio, and for developing countries it's mostly 0.01$/message over a local number, but no option to buy a local number.
- what is the difference between land coverage of cellular networks vs. EDGE/3G networks in the developing world? Does it make sense to focus on SMS to increase reach?
Would appreciate what you guys or anyone else has found out about this.