When SMS Interchange Agreements Expire, What We Have Is A Failure to Communicate
by Russell Shaw
Back on September 9 (a week ago yesterday, as I write this) I blogged about an interesting set of circumstances.
Specifically, that day marked the third day in a row I was unable to SMS from my Yahoo! Messenger with Voice account to the girlfriend’s T-Mobile Samsung.
Up until that Friday (9/7) I had no problems doing this. But in the 3-day interim before and including when I made that post, SMS attempts garnered an error message of the type that’s on that screencap here.
In a bit of digikismet (hey, I’ve just made up a new word), I found myself last week at the Internet Telephony Expo. Over the din of a 20-person-invitee dinner, I wound up speaking on background to a fairly high-up at the company that negotiated some of T-Mo’s SMS provisioning.
He told me that SMS interchange agreements between carriers are most often individually negotiated, and that sometimes- either due to fee disagreements or simple neglect- these agreements expire.
Funn thing, though. By Monday afternoon, September 10, SMS’ing between the Yahoo! Messenger with Voice interface and T-Mobile users was back up.
I am just that vainglorious to think that maybe the parties involved read my blog post, and then made things right again?
