About Bulk SMS

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Push-SMS : sending an unsolicited SMS-MT to a mobile user.
• SMS = Short Message Service : short text or binary message exchanged between two mobile phones2 or a mobile phone and a computer application.
• SMS-C : SMS Service Center : is the SMS transmission platform run by the mobile operator. It uses a specific protocol to exchange SMS messages between mobile phones and the VIDEOSMS software (either installed on a customer system or run by the Monaco Telematique shared host center). The SMS-C use a store and forward technology allowing it to store a message until a given mobile phone becomes reachable. Monaco Telematique VIDEOSMS software is able to interwork with any SMS-C worldwide.
• SMS-MO (Mobile Originated) : SMS sent from a mobile phone.
• SMS-MT (Mobile Terminated) : SMS sent to a mobile phone.
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The applications of SMS are nearly endless : this channel could be used to offer a wide range of services to mobile users.

Bulk

Bulk SMS : sending personalized messages to recipients
SMS is a very effective way to send immediately a customized message to one or thousands of users.
Figure 1: A computer system or application sends automatically personalized SMS-MT to mobile recipients

They could be used to:
• Improve communication between employees by integrating SMS within the enterprise messaging system and other integrated software (ERP) :
o It is possible to send a message through SMS from the enterprise messaging system.
o Any company application could automatically dispatch information through SMS to its intended recipient.
o The company ERP or a secretary could automatically forward to the user:
His new appointments: using vCalendar format, they will be displayed and automatically entered in the phone calendar application.
His new customers data: they will be displayed and automatically entered in the mobile directory thanks to the vCard format.
o SMS is a very reliable network : all messages will be acknowledged by the network when received by mobile recipient. In case of transmission problem (e.g. mobile unreachable), an alarm could be generated and the message could be automatically routed through another network (e.g. fax).
• Send informational or promotional messages, customized or not. For example :
o Banks could send account balances at regular intervals.
o A company could perform direct marketing operations to its customers.
• Automatically send time-sensitive personalized information at predefined times or when a given event occurs : the user could subscribe in advance to the service using SMS, Web, or any other method and he select which kind of information he will receive. The SMS application will then send him at predefined times or when a given even occurs:
o Updated informations :
Weather of the day
Account balance
Daily news alerts
Sports updates
o Alarm messages :
Account balance debtor.
Delay or cancellation of a flight.
Postponement of an appointment
o Specific message on a given event:
When a stock value reach a given amount.
When an ad matching the criteria specified in advance is passed.
When a given news event occur (e.g. sporting match result).
When a pre-sold item becomes available.
And so on.

Device customization
The market of phone set customization is currently a very lucrative service in Europe: users are choosing and downloading ringtones, logos or images on their handset.
Although simple in principle, these services are complicated by the wide variety of handsets and supported standards. The added value of these services remains quite low: the user ask for a ringtone or a logo and get it, either through SMS or Wap push.

Interactive processing : answering user request
Those applications may offer very high added value as they may allow any mobile user to perform any kind of request thru their mobile phone.
From the text content of the request SMS transmitted by the user, the server will be able to perform any kind of data processing: relational database search,
The exclusive Monaco Telematique SMS Grabber and Formatter technology allows to automatically perform search on existing Web sites, FTP files, videotex or computer applications according to user requests to immediately create a high value added SMS service taking advantage of the existing applications without any new development.
Figure 2: Example of interactive SMS service : the user sends a SMS-MO request that will be forwarded by his mobile network operator to the host server of the information provider. After processing, the information provider will send back one (or several) SMS-MT in answer with the requested information.
Amongst possible examples :
• Real-time request by sale forces of available stock of a given item with current price.
• SMS online banking operations: get account balance, get an alarm SMS message if the balance is negative,
• Taxi request: the system may even in some countries find the user geographical position in order to forward him the nearest taxi.
• Get the status of a plane flight.
• Interworking between SMS network and other networks: fax, email, telex, and so on.
• Meteorological information retrieval either for the general public or for special uses (aeronautical, nautical, mountain…).
• Games.

The Premium model allows the SMS information provider to get paid for each user request: depending on the short number used, charging rate selected and his contract with the network operator, the information provider will earn a given amount at each SMS-MO request sent by a mobile user. The mobile user will be invoiced directly on his phone bill by his network operator, and the network operator will pay back his share to the information provider.