Recently I had another chance to confirm correctness of this statement.
Few weeks ago MTS introduced charges for SMS delivery reports. Similar practices exist in many foreign countries. But on the former Soviet territory there haven’t been such precedents until now. Unpopular innovation caused heavy criticism among users.
Angry messages and scandalous headlines flooded internet and newspapers. My immediate reaction was negative as well. It seemed as if company repeated its earlier mistakes when – in 2006 – it worsened its “unlimited” tariffs for subscribers.
Competitors poured oil on flames and quickly denied their intentions to introduce similar changes. Everything looked as if MTS did it driven by desire to increase revenues.
However few evident inconsistencies made me give a closer look into the situation. Firstly, three kopecks for SMS delivery report will hardly generate significant cash flow. Secondly, in recent years the company avoids to take abrupt action that can cause severe reaction of its clients. Therefore money can hardly be the reason.
Out of focus dropped the issue of “signaling traffic”, one of the most acute and painful problems of mobile networks. In addition to mobile voice and data traffic mobile networks support huge amount of technical information, commands and signals – the so called signaling traffic.
SMS messages generate sizable proportion of such traffic. Data devices such as smartphones, laptops and USB dongles generate ten times more signaling traffic than traditional devices.
American AT&T was first to identify and report the problem in 2010. Highly popular iPhones literally clogged the operator’s network with huge amount of parasite traffic. For 3G networks the problem is irrelevant as they were originally designed for smart data devices.
In Ukraine however mobile operators do not have 3G licenses so far and have to look for compromise decisions in the face of growing number of modern data devices in their 2G networks. In fact there is a problem of purely technical nature.
Actual life of mobile operators is full of compromise. There is always a dilemma between quality, price and return on investment. Free is not always good.
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Roman Khimich is a telecommunications expert. You can find his blog at http://totaltelecom.livejournal.com/
