Last update - 00:00 04/02/2007
SMS problems inflate revenues
By Eran Gabay
Every day, 9 million text messages are sent in Israel, and the short message service has become the second most popular method of communication, after phone calls.
But in spite of text messaging's importance in terms of communication, the service is far from proper and transparent - and a significant portion of messages sent stem from mistakes by the cellular companies, which increase the cost to consumers.
The problems include failures in sending and receiving messages, delays of up to several hours in receiving messages, messages limited to a small number of characters, no transparency in potential failures to send messages, and spam messages sent against customers' wishes. All of these inflate the number of messages sent - and the revenues of the cellular operators.
An investigation by TheMarker has revealed that text messages between Partner and Pelephone are often not fully transmitted, so that the message arrives with part missing. This seems to affect some 5-10 percent of all text messages from Partner to Pelephone.
Sending text messages has become a habit, and in recent years, as prices have gone down, and call charges are regulated and decreasing, Israeli cellular subscribers have shown growing interest in sending text messages instead of calling.
Cellular customers have become accustomed to the text-message service, and the demand for such usage has become fixed. Nevertheless, if the cellular firms do not improve the service, they will find it hard to convince consumers to switch to more advanced value-added services in the future - which the companies expect to be their chief sources of future growth.
The problem sending text messages from Partner to Pelephone does not occur frequently, but a customer who uses the service often could find dozens of messages a month cut short.
Pelephone said it was not aware of the problem and had not received any complaints on the matter. In any case, Pelephone said that in examining the messages that arrived with information missing, that is how they arrived from Partner.
Sources at Partner were much more careful in responding, and did not deny knowledge of the problem. However, they pushed off the blame onto Pelephone's systems, saying the messages were complete when they left Partner. "It is a specific problem at Pelephone that has been identified and located, and is being dealt with by Pelephone," said sources at Partner.
Pelephone did not respond officially.
It seems the problem stems from the conversion from Partner's GSM protocol to Pelephone's CDMA. Even though Cellcom also uses GSM, Cellcom uses a different method of conversion and thus avoids the problem.
Some 3 billion text messages are sent every year in Israel, and SMS provides almost 50 percent of cellular providers' revenues from added value services (services other than phone calls). This is worth more than half a billion shekels a year.
Other problems appear around holidays or during emergencies, when text messages are often delayed for hours before delivery. This was the case on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, when many messages took 24 hours to arrive.
However, even on regular days, messages can be delayed, and neither the receiver - or sender - is aware the message has been delayed, though there are occasional exceptions. This may not be a real problem for social use, but it is a serious problem for business use.
Recently the law to require cellular companies to notify consumers - and not to charge them - if their message was not received has advanced in the Knesset. Currently only Cellcom implements such a policy, which would cost all the companies only NIS 6 million a year.
Moreover, the customer may receive a notification immediately that the message was not sent - and after resending the message, both the original and second may go out - and the customer will be charged twice.