Wanted: SMS over WiFi

Wireless Carriers (or MNOs - Mobile Network Operators) make it to the top of the hall of fame when it comes to ignoring the existence of the Internet. They see their world span as far as their network coverage does. Or where they have roaming partners. Like German tourists going in hordes where their travel agencies reach. Not a mile further. But, believe it or not, there is a world in places, where there is no 2G or 3G or 4G signal.

This is the world I live in. And this is the world I have been visiting over the last three weeks in South America - the Andes and the Amazon jungle.

My Peruvian wireless experience started at the Lima airport, where I realized Orange, my MNO, did not have data roaming agreement with any of the Peruvian networks. Can you imagine? GSM is all about compatibility and roaming. We are twenty years since the system was conceived. And all I get is voice roaming. How pathetic... Who uses voice these days? It certainly is not my favorite mobile VAS. By the way, over the three weeks period I did not make any outgoing calls and I got just one incoming (my bank confirming my excessive use of an ATM) and one missed (not important). At the same time I kept on getting many emails, tweets, Facebook notifications and some SMSes. Also quite often, not to say for the most of the time, I was out of the 2G/3G network coverage, but still able to access the Internet. I cannot say WiFi has been everywhere, but it was present almost every day, even in the heart of the Amazon jungle, by means of a satellite modem with a WiFi access point, whenever the power generator was running.

I really like the 20th Gilder's law of content and conduit. It says they should be divorced.

This law comes in the form of a commandment to divorce content from conduit. The less content a network owns the more content flows through it. If you are a content company, you want your content to travel on all networks, not just your own. If you are a conduit company, you want to carry everyone’s content, not restrict yourself to your own. Companies that violate this rule (AU, AOL Time Warner) tear themselves apart. The dumber the network the more intelligence it can carry.

MNOs seem like they do not understand, they should vote themselves to be either content (services, mobile telephone number) providers or conduit (transmission infrastructure) providers. Being both is not a good idea. It had had to be that way twenty years ago, but not today. There also used to be technical excuses for not providing voice over other, unknown networks (although UMA, which I have already cried a river over, works flawlessly, and I do hope LTE - based voice standards will pave the way for the UMA 2.0). But really, there is absolutely no excuse for not providing SMS over WiFi (or any other form of Internet access).

Some may ask, why I would need SMS over the Internet? Frankly, there are a number of reasons. SMS will not go away and will not be replaced by email or any other Internet messaging service or protocol. Because it can be monetized. Because it is considered an alternative communications channel for many security applications (like banking one time passwords). And because it has the widest reach - millions of people who do not have email addresses can receive SMSes. And it is dead simple to transmit 160 bytes of text over a TCP/IP network. All that is needed is a standardized SMS over WiFi client on a phone and a compatible gateway provided by a MNO. And situations when such service would be used are more common than you think.

At home I have a big problem using Internet banking, because even that I have Internet provided by a DSL line, I do not have GSM coverage. And almost every banking transaction today requires an SMS code. In Peru we were traveling a lot by buses. They have on - board WiFi. It was working even when my phone was showing no signal. In the jungle there was WiFi, even that the closest base station was 50 miles away (way too far to connect).

Technically SMS over WiFi is dead easy. Economically it does not require high investments. And the OPEX would be very low. All it requires is a little of an out of the box thinking by the MNOs and a standard to be laid (hello, GSMA!). So will we get it? Unfortunately I doubt. Despite the laments heard everywhere, MNOs are still cash cows and most of them are not interested in providing a service making some of their customers happy some time. The Quality vs ROI issue strikes back.