Telkom hits home with landline SMS

By Rodney Weidemann for Telkom
Johannesburg, 25 Nov 2004

From 1 December, Telkom`s postpaid customers will be able to send and receive SMS messages from their landlines, thanks to a new value-added service launched by the monopoly.

According to new product development executive, Steven White, SMS messages to landlines is a concept pioneered by Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia a couple of years ago, although the technology met with mixed success back then.

"The technology has since matured, and now it has been proven to work as a concept. Also, we feel that through innovative product bundling, this service will be successful for Telkom," he says.

In order to send and receive text messages, customers will require an SMS-capable telephone (one with a display screen) and will need to subscribe to Telkom`s IdentiCall service.

"IdentiCall is necessary, as it is able to differentiate whether the incoming call is a voice call or a text message," says White.

"Customers who already have IdentiCall have been automatically SMS-enabled, although new clients will obviously need to subscribe to the service."

He says the service will be free for the first three months - from 1 December to 28 February - and after that, Telkom will be aggressive in terms of its pricing structure, as this service is part of the value-add the company brings to its service bundle.

"At present it is only available between Telkom and Vodacom, although we expect to sort out the technical difficulties with Cell C very soon. MTN is still thinking the offer through, although obviously we would like them on board in order to make this a complete service.

"The service also excludes international SMSes and premium-rated SMSes, and can handle a maximum of 160 characters," he says.

White claims the company also offers the option of voice SMS, which translates the message into sound bites for those customers who do not have SMS-enabled phones, although this option, which understands 'SMS language` and abbreviations, is only available in English for now.

"We believe the teenage market could find the landline SMS offering very useful, as teens tend to be SMS-mad, but can`t really afford them. Therefore, with aggressive pricing, we feel we can capture a lot of this market," he says.

"As for the impact on voice revenues, I don`t believe it will have a huge effect, as there are differing reasons for SMSing to those for calling someone. It`s similar to having flowers delivered to a girl or taking them to her yourself."