Two-Way Messaging Comes to Rural Midwest
In debuting this service, the carrier is making a technology available to rural residents that is currently unavailable to most metro-area consumers, but according to Dennis Miller, Midwest Wireless president, the carrier has been at the leading edge of technology and information services for a long time. For example, in 1996, the company began the conversion process to digital, and it began offering a one-way SMS service about a year ago.
"We believe, as most of the industry believes, that we are migrating from a voice centric world to a combination of voice and data and, eventually, data will account for the greater part of our revenue stream, " Miller said. "This service is a bridge toward a WAP world where people can interrogate the Web for the information they want."
Two-Way Messaging
Midwest Wireless runs the service through its short message service (SMS) system, so messages are limited to 160 characters. If there is more information than that, it is divided into multiple messages. Not surprisingly, it has been the techno-savvy customers who have been the ones to use the one-way SMS service so far, but Miller said he expects the two-way service to attract additional segments, including the younger crowd and eventually the general public. He said local content will drive that proliferation.
The carrier plans to add several layers of service on top of the basic functionality. One of the first likely will be ticketing services, but it will also look at location-based services down the line. The company worked with Lava 2140 (Los Angeles, CA) to set up the suite of services. According to Tim Tupy, Midwest Wireless product and services development manager, part of the reason they went with Lava was because the company allowed for an open architecture for adding local services down the road.
"We won't have to turn around and pay someone else to set up that for us," Tupy said. The company wasn't just a development shop; it also offered insight into what a carrier needs, he said. Many of the entities that the carrier will be getting content from are non-profit ones. Information about schools, churches, and libraries is going to provide value on a local level for rural customers, Tupy said, not directions to the nearest Starbucks.
Lava also offered quick time to market. Once the agreement was signed last fall, it was a Saturday-to-Friday implementation. Of course, then there were the myriad details to work out during limited trials. Because the carrier was breaking new ground with mobile-originated SMS in the TDMA arena, there was no precedent to follow.
It was the first two-way TDMA implementation for Lava, Tupy said. The project also required some customization with the Nortel infrastructure equipment because it hadn't yet dealt with two-way SMS in a TDMA network either.
Marketing
Midwest Wireless markets the new two-way e-mail service under the brand name MAIL.IT to residents throughout the company's service area, which includes 36 counties in southern and central Minnesota, 28 counties in northern Iowa, and four counties in western Wisconsin. The service will be available to the company's ClearlyDigital and Realm digital service subscribers, who have phones with outgoing message capability. These include Nokia's 5120i and 6120i models. It has priced the service at $5.95 per month, which includes 800 messages, with additional messages costing 10ยข each. However, to help educate its customer base about the service, the company is offering a promotional 90-day free trial.
By Ellen Jensen, Managing Editor, Wireless Networks Online