As a mobile industry veteran for nearly a decade, I would consider myself a trusted source on advising an organization, large or small, on implementing mobile technology, or any Internet technology for that matter.  In parallel, I’ve been involved in the real estate industry for nearly 13 years, and the moving industry for nearly 20 years via my family business and personal investments over the years.  My company, Goomzee.com, has combined both these passions and provides a leading mobile marketing solution throughout the United States to real estate sales professionals.

These past couple years, the industry is beginning to recognize the value of mobile solutions and there has been “buzz” lately but it pains me to see inexperienced providers offering sometimes detrimental solutions that many real estate professionals will not be the wiser over what will help their business versus hurt their business, and budget.

As such, I am commissioning several studies and pulling in global experts in mobile technology, usability, best practices, common pitfalls, vendor selection criterion, etc. and will work with industry leaders to help others make informed decisions with regards to their technology and in particular, mobile technology, strategies.  I will announce the completion of the study here on my personal blog and our team and partners will likely syndicate as well.

In the meantime, the one scary thing I’ve seen are some companies trying to offer text message (SMS) solutions that use a 10-digit phone number (essentially some cell phone connected to a server).  In the mobile world, experts know this is a SIM card plugged into a GSM or GPRS modem and should only be used for testing and R&D purposes, never for a commercial application or service.  Sadly though, I recently saw companies trying exactly that to avoid carrier messaging, short code and other costs and promoting this commercially.

This is not only risky, but also runs risk of costing clients thousands of dollars in re-branding if the carrier shuts down that mobile phone number plan given abuse of their Terms & Conditions (T&C).  To make matters worse, a simple Google search can tell you that the maximum message throughput of a GSM-modem-based SMS solution is 6-7 messages per minute; GPRS has a theoretical max of 30 message per minute - both would not support the needs of most communities.

I asked another industry veteran to confirm (fact-check) on the risks imposed with this type of solution and “lessons learned” from global mobile experts.

“To your question, you are exactly right [regarding short code versus 10-digit phone for SMS]:

1) No quality of service (when you connect to short code/aggregator, you get an SLA — speed of delivery guarantees, uptime guarantees, error messages, etc.)
2) Limited throughput with a modem (very limited over GSM)
3) More chances of not getting the message delivered (2 transmit links are over the air, not just one)
4) Risk of being shut down by carriers because this approach does clearly not respect the T&C’s associated with an end-user contract

In other words, good enough to build/ test a prototype, but clearly not enough to run and grow a serious business…  (We started ourselves with a modem for our original prototype, but never ran any commercial traffic through it, just tests.)”

- Alex Gonthier, CTO of Paymo.com   (see bios of executive team:  http://www.paymo.com/about/executiveteam.php )

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