Bryan Betts reports Most mobile phones can send and receive brief text messages as well as voice calls, yet so far text has mostly been limited to personal messages, sports results and news feeds. Having originally planned to build a wireless auction platform, WCL's founders soon realised that they had developed something rather more generic. It is the content logic that differs. The query goes through the gateway, interrogates the application and returns the response. Consumers like simple services.
Speed can be a problem, however.
Peaks include Saturday afternoon, when the sports results go out, and early morning, when news feeds are being delivered. An SMS application can be funded in one of two ways. Delivery can be paid for by the sending company. An example of this would be a marketing service, where an SMS number on an advert permits readers to retrieve product information. The alternative is a reverse billing agreement, with the network operator adding charges to a subscriber's mobile phone bill.