A SMS home-routing follow-up

I’ve been getting more and more emails recently from confused and annoyed mobile application developers — and, in particular, smaller aggregators who’re having a bit of trauma with mobile operators who have implemented (or are busy implementing) home routing.

I’ve written on this before — my last post drew quite a bit of email feedback — and I’ve been following the issue closely.

It’s not sexy. But it is important and I’d like to draw your attention to what’s going on.

Here’s the old way, right? (High level…)

If I want to deliver a text message to you, I can. Provided I’ve got the peering arrangements in place I can more or less reach into your operator’s network, find your handset and terminate a text message on it. Right?

*I* do that. Nobody else. Me.

That means I know if it’s been delivered. Or I know if your handset’s not yet received the text.

Sensible. Simple. Easy.

Putting a really simple bent on it, it’s the equivalent of you turning up to a nightclub and asking if you can deliver a message to Bob who’s inside having a wicked time at the second floor bar. You ask the bouncer to let you in. He nods and opens the rope line for you. You walk into the club, ignore all the fawning women and the super loud music, you find Bob, peel him away from whoever he’s attached to, slap him around a little to wake him up and give him the message. He says ‘Thanks mate, ok, got it.’ You smile, slap him on the back and head out and give a nod to the bouncer as you exit.

All good. That’s the way it’s been working for years. Private, direct, excellent.

One or two operators have been flirting with home routing. Using the same nightclub example, home routing means I turn up to the nightclub and I’m faced with an ultra-arsey bouncer who refuses to let me in.

“I’ve got a message for Bob, though? Gotta deliver it.”

“What’s the message?” demands the bouncer.

“I’m not telling you. It’s private!” I retort.

“Tell me and I’ll deliver it, no exceptions,” says the bouncer, towering over me.

So I’ve no choice. I give him the message and he disappears, leaving the door to be manned by another frowning hulk.

10 seconds later the bouncer returns.

“Delivered your message, now sod off,” he grunts.

“Er, look, I need some sort of confirmation?” I ask.

“Delivered, right? Now sod off or I’ll show you some real confirmation with my baseball bat.”

I’m not happy, “Listen, how did you deliver the message to him in 10 seconds? He’s on the second floor?”

“Stop asking questions. You got your answer. SOD OFF!”

That’s home routing for you. It’s called home-routing because the home network does the delivering itself. That means it can choose what service level to apply, what content filters to use and ultimately, whether to bother delivering the message in the first place. You don’t have a clue whether it was actually delivered, whether it’s been read and copied to multiple destinations by mistake, you have no control over the delivery.

Just trust.

And trust, unfortunately, doesn’t work that well.

I’m hoping to feature a few examples — possibly anonymous, to protect the suppliers — of where some European operators have been abusing or screwing around with mobile applications as a result of their new found home routing powers.

The biggest, biggest issue I can discern is reliability. Previously developers and aggregators were able to offer their clients a degree of guarantee. Home routing — obviously — makes a mockery of that. If you’re a small traffic SMS service, you can easily have your pipe cut off or temporarily disabled whilst the operator arses about with traffic management — giving full priority on it’s network to, for example, Pop Idol billing messages, or the like. Meantime you only find out that your texts aren’t actually arriving when customers start complaining. Because the operator running home routing told you the texts were delivered. When actually they were sat in a pile waiting for a few million billing messages to go by.

If you’ve been touched or nailed by home routing, could you get in touch — I’ll treat your comments anonymously if you wish — so I can cover your experiences?