Cellular companies may resume Delivery Reports for SMS in near future; however, this time service won’t be free and may come with some charges.
The details of charges are yet unknown – and customers may not like them, for a reason that they had been enjoying the service free of charge before. However, cellular companies see another potential stream of revenues in delivery reports.
Thanks to high number of subscribers in our country, there are millions of mobile users who would opt-in Delivery Report service (given that charges are per month basis) thus bringing a lot of revenues for cellular companies.
Just take an example; total mobile subscriber base is around 96 million (as of October 2009). Let’s assume 20% of them want delivery status notification. Which makes it around 19 million. If they put Rs. 10 per month, it’ll be more than Rs. 190 million for all telecoms.
However, if cellular companied adopt the model of charges per SMS then scenario may get different. Let’s assume telecom operators they put 1 Paisa per SMS report. Based on the stats on ProPakistani in Jun 09, Following would be the detailed (but estimated) revenues structure that Telecoms will make from these charges (on monthly basis):
Note: SMS traffic shown in above graph was for April-June 2009 quarter. Which may differ from current stats.
Clearly, per month basis charging model would suit both the subscriber and the operator. One reason is that companies should not expect high base if they apply per SMS charges, that means less revenues. While, per month charges will let many subscribers afford the service.
No words yet on the start date of the service. Apparently all mobile operators will bring this service back!