I attended the Mobile Barcamp in NYC today. It was the best “conference” that I’ve been so far. After exactly 10 min Eric from Padwap.com answered pretty much all my questions and I could have left right away. I never expected that a Barcamp is so much more valuable than these old-school 3-4 day conferences, where usually the same speakers speak year after year.
Here a few notes from this session:
-There are about 10 major carriers in the US . In order to talk to a carrier, it requires, that you sent a minimum of 100k messages per month. A way around this is to work with Agregators (Mblox / Verisign). Agregators work with different technology: XML or SMPP.
- No international MMS standards exist (so MMS for int. use not recommended)
- If you need a shortcode go directly to USshortcodes / Netbiz because it saves you money. Agregators like Mblox can do that as well, but it will cost you more.
-Shared shortcodes vs. Real shortcodes: Shared shortcodes are good to save money, but otherwise their is no advantage. Switching from Shared to full Shortcode impossible.
-Different carriers block out different delivery of messages, b/c of mobile spam and business rules of the carriers (carriers pretty much suck 
- MT/MO
- Adult content has separate shortcodes worldwide / In the US adult content not possible.
- SMS is not email and treat it that way (message routing / SMS not able to trackback which SMS it’s coming from, b/c there is not a standardize protocol)
- SMS Tracking extremely difficult, b/c different provider treat them differentally.
- SMS activation might speed up approval process for shortcode. Application process takes very long. Political correct application should speed up the process
- Always setup an Opt. in as well as an Opt. out for the SMS. Otherwise you’d get in trouble with agregator.
