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Report: SMS Does Not Handle Volume Well At All

Written by Evan Schuman
June 27th, 2008
In one of the first wide-scale studies of SMS' capability to hold up under volume pressure, the technology fared "surprisingly" poorly, according to Keynote Systems. This has particular significance for retailers, who are exploring the technology's use for mobile communications connecting to both online and in-store.

"Response times for some short codes degraded severely during the busiest hours of the day. One CSC (common short code) showed a 60 percent peak-period slowdown every day, indicating a major capacity issue was present," Keynote said. "Many of the CSCs monitored showed significant reliability issues. Several (experienced) more than 10 hours of outage while one (experienced) more than 50 hours."

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Posted in E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Mobile/Wireless/Contactless, Payment Systems, Premium Content, Software
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One Comment | Read Report: SMS Does Not Handle Volume Well At All

  1. Robert Martinez Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Did they publish which message aggregators the companies with problems were using for their promotions. There are definitely a wide range of quality for the aggregators available in the States and it may be unfair to make wide statements about the reliability of SMS messaging. If you could have the success broken out by the aggregator companies it would be appreciated. I am sure most people reading this would like to avoid those companies with delivery issues

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