SMS will ‘drive the mobile Internet’
Yet, this does not mean that SMS will be cannibalised by the mobile Internet, rather SMS will benefit from it. “The mobile Internet provides wireless application service providers with an additional means to drive SMS traffic,” says Dr Pieter Streicher, MD of Celerity Systems.
“The typing of a Web address into a cell phone is laborious, and not as easy as sending a link to a Web site via SMS. Many businesses already use premium rate SMS to direct users to mobile Internet content.”
A user enters a keyword and SMS’s it to a shortcode to access the mobile Internet link. The next step is to click on the link and go to the Web site, or save the link as a bookmark for future reference.
For example, to access surf and weather information for Durban from the Wavescape surf forecasting service, a user would send ‘WD’ to the shortcode 35014 (at a cost of R3). A link is then sent to the cell phone and the user clicks on the link to access the Web content.
Nevertheless, the accessing of mobile content via a cell phone is slower than surfing the Web from one’s PC or laptop, and leaves many users with unmet expectations when trying out the mobile Internet.
According to Streicher it is not a matter of bandwidth (how much data can flow through a connection over a period of time), network infrastructure or cell phone capabilities. It is the latency inherent to the mobile Internet that results in slower connections and diminished user experience.
Latency is the time it takes for one packet of data to move from one point to another via the Internet. In the case of the mobile Internet, all traffic is routed via a WAP proxy server before accessing a Web page.
“Even if a user sat underneath a 3G cell phone tower, with the latest 3G handset and tried to link to a Web page with only one byte of data, there would still be an unacceptable time delay between the request for data and the initiation of the data download. Once the latency problem is addressed at network level the use of the mobile Internet will rise rapidly,” says Streicher.
A further step in the direction of fuelling the adoption of the mobile Internet is the establishing of .mobi, a mobile top-level domain. The domain has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which regulates Internet domain names. The .mobi domain will enable businesses to have Web sites designed for content delivery to small screen devices, such as cell phones, Streicher says.
“The key for rapid growth in the mobile Internet is for network operators to reduce the latency. This will facilitate browsing via hyperlinks, the key characteristic of the World Wide Web. The use of premium rate SMS to access mobile Internet links will drive users to access Web content in an efficient and uncomplicated manner,” concludes Streicher.
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