Sending Data In Bursts of SMS Messages 181
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian carrier Rogers has been experiencing some extreme loads of late, as researchers at the University of Waterloo investigate the potential for sending data spread across bursts of hundreds of text messages. They sent around 80,000 messages in the course of a project testing a new protocol able to cram 32KB into 250 messages sent from a BlackBerry, reaching a rate of 20 bytes per second. The group thinks its protocol could be useful in rural areas of the developing world where text messaging is the only affordable, reliable link."
Re:Unusable and expensive (Score:4, Informative)
You pay: Monthly for a cellular package with unlimited texting
You get: 20 baud
Actually, (ignoring the fact that "baud" is the incorrect term) that would be either 160 or 200 baud, depending on whether you include error correction bits in the calculation. :)
Email over SMS (Score:1, Informative)
A company called Jamun (http://jaamun.in/) already offers a email over SMS service in India.
Re:My 300 baud modem shivered... (Score:3, Informative)
You must be young. I remember using acoustical modems back in 1974 and they weren't that new back then. The reason we used them was because it was illegal to connect to the copper on a POTS line back then and Ma Bell's solution was VERY expensive and very non-portable.
Re:so now will they bill $1 per txt each way? (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously the poor people in the sticks might not have fancy 3G stuff; but why would you attempt to shove data over SMS(aside from short message snippets from embedded devices, and suchlike applications), when GPRS already exists? All sorts of dirt cheap phones support being used as modems, without any special software, and, while it might well be more expensive now, for economically perverse reasons, SMS won't be cheaper for long if it becomes standard practice to do general-purpose data transfer over SMS on a large scale...
Re:My 300 baud modem shivered... (Score:3, Informative)
The reason we used them was because it was illegal to connect to the copper on a POTS line back
That became legal in 1968 with the Carterphone ruling. You probably had an acoustic coupler in 1974, because the modular jack wasn't introduced until 1976.
Re:Oops (Score:5, Informative)
It's completely idiotic. There are two ways in which SMS is implemented:
On older GSM networks, it's part of the control channel. There is some unused space in one of the control packets. It was a scarce resource and flooding it could actually prevent anyone making calls (there was a fairly simple DoS attack possible). This was the original reason for SMS being expensive - the network couldn't handle much SMS traffic.
On newer networks (GPRS and newer), it's just treated as data. It's wrapped in a packet header indicating that it's SMS and then sent in the same way as IP data.
In any area where you just have GSM, there isn't enough bandwidth available for SMS for this to be useful. In an area where you have GPRS or anything newer then SMS is just a way of adding a huge packet header to your IP packets. It's transmitted the same way as IP data, you're just using the available bandwidth less efficiently.
Mobile Comn is Very Cheap in poorer Countries (Score:1, Informative)
There seems to be a disconnect between the Western Thinking and Eastern Reality. Take India for example, mobile comn is not really a luxury and even the lowest of the economic bracket posses mobiles. The fact is stranger than fiction.
SMS = Re 1 = approx 2 cents
GPRS/EDGE/2G Data for non plan subscribers = Re 0.1 for 10Kb that is ===> 0.2 Cents for 100Kb !!!!!
(its cheaper if you are on a plan)
why would anyone send data using SMS?
With Major Operators in Africa being bought out by Indian Telecom Companies... MTN etc
same will be the case with Africa..
Do you do a reality check ...or its assumed economics for you