DISQUS

Gautam Kshatriya · 1 year ago

SMS GupShup, an India based startup has 7mn unique monthly visitors, pretty much all from India (the number of Twitter accounts from India stood at just over 1600 in end-2007). The service is completely free - and despite having to deal with much more traffic to its site and number of messages per day (approx 10mn per day) it hasn't broken down. Check out my related post: http://www.moneyvidya.com/blog/?p=266
Azeem · 1 year ago

As I understand SMS is pretty much uncharged between operators and aggregators in India allowing for this sort of model. As an aggregator you can pay an operator a flat fee for unlimited SMS, therefore margin cost = zero. A unique market.
Corrections, clarifications, anyone?
Sanjay Vijayakumar · 1 year ago

It is quite possible for twitter to offer SMS updates in India via its shortcode 5566511. This is primarily due to the fact that the cost per sms is amazingly low for buying in bulk from aggregators or operators. ( approx 0.001 USD for 10M SMS ).

@ Azeem - it is not correct that you can pay a flat fee and get unlimited sms. Infact i am not sure if that model exists anywhere in the world, leave alone India.

But it is true that in India - there is CURRENTLY no interoperator charge for SMS or fee for incoming sms.