If SMS was priced like data, a message would cost 0.03c

Meh, SMS is dying. No one uses it much these days and the mobile operators know this. Which is why they're trying to get OTT players regulated. Bunch of clowns.
 
ICASA...fine CSPs heavily like mtn Nigeria did. CSPs cry when they have competition eg. OTT services.
Why are csps getting away with rippoff prices? Calls and data etc are cheaper in rest of Africa.
It costs less to call from most African countries to SA than a local SA call. How does that work.
 
Tander said:
Meh, SMS is dying. No one uses it much these days and the mobile operators know this. Which is why they're trying to get OTT players regulated. Bunch of clowns.
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I use it a lot.

I sent about 50 STOP sms'es a day. These spam guys and the operators are in cahoots.
 
werfie said:
I sent about 50 STOP sms'es a day. These spam guys and the operators are in cahoots.
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There's your problem....
I really think you're better off just ignoring those messages. Your reply is just a sign that the number is active.
 
For too long the mobile operators were milking us with exorbitant sms rates - now they want to cry foul because of services like Whatsapp. They literally made millions. But technology caught up with them. They still make their millions with data now (R149 a gig is ridiculous) but the exploitation with sms is over. They have to accept it and move on.
 
you are effectively paying over R1,500 per MB for the amount of data you are sending
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That's a cool R1.5 million per gig for zero extra investment!

I am disappoint.. where's Jannie from Vodacom to spin this as actually R0.015 using their 'blended sms' formula? LOL!

And Shameel, not even a graph to show us how you've been lowering this cost to some imaginary figure nobody's ever heard of for our benefit?

Shouldn't you be squealing at the exposure of your profiteering like that guy in Deliverance? Oh wait.. not when you're the ones doing the shafting, right?
 
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Tander said:
Meh, SMS is dying. No one uses it much these days and the mobile operators know this. Which is why they're trying to get OTT players regulated. Bunch of clowns.
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Still very popular for business-to-consumer applications, where usage is increasing. It's still the only way to get something critical like an OTP to a user, with any kind of guarantee that it'll reach him, and they will be able to read it.
 
elvis_presley said:
Still very popular for business-to-consumer applications, where usage is increasing. It's still the only way to get something critical like an OTP to a user, with any kind of guarantee that it'll reach him, and they will be able to read it.
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I concur. I think that will be its saving grace from extinction.
 
We can all agree that SMS is massively overpriced, but this is a pointless article. There's a very good reason it's not priced like data, it's because SMS is old tech and costs the operator more than just the traffic. The mobile provider has to have pretty beefy systems on the back-end to store and forward the SMSes, the protocol used to send the SMS to/from the phones is incredibly inefficient compared to a data connection and takes up more resources on the operators' infrastructure.

I'm not defending the SMS price, but sensationalist BS articles like this do nothing to inform the public in any way and serve to reinforce misconceptions. I'm not sure if it's honest ignorance from the author, or wilful clickbait.
 
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Well thankfully we have options nowadays besides sms
 
werfie said:
Yeah... I should probably stop this. :mad:
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If you have a smartphone, just get an app like Clean Inbox or SMSBlocker, that filters out spam messages with the option to put your own rules in for blacklisting. Like building up a repository of words like: "FREE, OPT OUT, Ts&Cs, ONLY, STOP", then that message will never be seen by you as it goes to your spam folder, so never bothers you and no need to "confirm" your number.
 
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