more on Verizon's Voice Mailboxes Now Give 'Shout Out' to Verizon Wireless Phones When New Messages Arrive

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Chris Kantarjiev <cak () dimebank com>
Date: June 10, 2005 2:50:26 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, patrick () ianai net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Verizon's Voice Mailboxes Now Give 'Shout  
Out' to Verizon Wireless Phones When New Messages Arrive


> Possibly.  But Verizon home could have offered it without any
> negotiation a long time ago, and not just to VZ mobile phones.  You
> might have to pay for an incoming SMS, but lots of people would
> happily pay for the service.

I bet that VZW would have charged Verizon home for every such
notification, because they have to show revenue, and Verizon home
had no way to charge it back to the customer, and didn't wish to
absorb the cost, because they would have to reveal it in their
balance sheet.


> This is all trivial to do.  Some people do it themselves with a $500
> PC and free software.  The fact that Verizon as a company took so
> long to do it speaks volumes for the telecommunications industry.

Yes. But there's nothing new here. The telecoms business is amazingly
hide-bound, and much of that is because the in-place billing systems
are so intractable. I spent several years in the SMS business, trying
to sell third-party services to wireless providers. The number one
complaint we got was "it would take us 18 months to implement
the billing".

It's really short-sightedness on their part - the fact that they
have the billing relationship with the customer is what gives
them power. They should be leveraging that rather than using
it as an excuse.

(By the same token, we tried to sell similar services to Avaya
and other voice pbx vendors, and they, too, didn't/couldn't
figure out how to manage the variable cost of sending the
SMS, so they weren't interested.)


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