cMail - Cellular E-mail
Today's New York Times has an article titled "E-Mailing a Cellphone by the Numbers" that discusses a new relay service created by frustrated entrepreneur Guy Botham. As the article states:
If you're Guy Botham, you figure out a way to let your computer do the work for you. Mr. Botham created Teleflip (teleflip.com), an e-mail service that allows anyone to send an e-mail message to any text-equipped cellphone in North America without knowing that phone's e-mail address. The sender simply uses the telephone number followed by@teleflip .com, and the message reaches the phone a few minutes later.
E-mail is always a favorite topic of mine, especially with my rather strict belief that e-mail is an application even more so than a communication tool. This certainly falls into the category of e-mail as application. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure of the value created as a result of this new process. For anyone who has used SMS on their cell phone, its truly an interesting application of network technology. As the proud owner of a Treo 600, I've been very keen to find uses for SMS and have done random tests to friends.
The other day, for example, I sent an SMS message to a friend using the AT&T Wireless service. As we waited for the message to arrive, we sat wondering how the message knew how to locate my phone since I am on Sprint PCS. Our assumption was that there was a relay service somewhere behind the scenes, most likely that ties to a larger registry. I do recall, however, that I have attempted to send an SMS message that was not able to be sent, but I can't confirm the reason for that.
Which leads to my question of the true value. Since SMS is a quasi-omnipresent, utilizes the well-fortified network infrastructue the mega communications corporations, and is simple-to-use, why would I opt to use a 3rd party for the same function? In addition, the revenue model associated with this process intends to place Short Code advertisements at the bottom of the message, much like Hotmail and Yahoo! brand their e-mail messages. Do we need more network pollution?
But that's the business side, on the development side I thought I would also post an analysis of how this system might work. I can't imagine it would be terribly complicated. It could happen like this:
User sends message to teleflip.com address
Teleflip located the appropriate cellular service provider. Teleflip would most likely build a short-lived cache of the previously matched phone numbers for efficieny reasons. If the number is not found in the cache:
Teleflip starts at the top of its list of cellular service providers user mail domains. This list would naturally be ordered in terms of market penetration to ensure that the shortest search possible was performed.
Teleflip sends a test "message" to verify that the account exists at the service provider's mail domain. This technique is used commonly in anti-spam and other e-mail verification services to confirm that the address entered matches. I've even found companies that offer commercial-grade web services if anyone was that interested in doing this.
Upon locating a match, Teleflip caches the service provider address for future messages
Teleflip forwards the message, appending the appropriate advertisement
And that's about it. I guess we'll have to wait for their patent application to make it into the USPTO online database to see how accurate my estimate is.
UPDATE: Apparently, I didn't even search long enough to find this. A friend points out that you can locate the service provider using one of many specialized searches, like this one. I am going to guess that the area code and exchange are allocated very specifically and that's what let's us know who owns what. Thanks Pappoe.