Perhaps my suggestion will be dismissed as flippant, but why would anyone bother, at this point, to make serious investments in SMS-related services and technology, including contracts, high commitments, administrative overhead, API development, etc? It is a technologically primitive but pervasive (for the moment) profit center for the mobile carriers because it incurs virtually no marginal cost for them; SMS messages are carried as padding in control frames exchanged among network elements (as well as towers to handsets) that are sent anyway. It is, however, blatantly obvious that unlimited data plans provide an unmetered alternative that is not nearly as lucrative for the carriers. What's saving SMS right now is its ubiquity on non-"smartphone" handsets and deliberate stalling action arising from the collusion of handset vendors with operators to make SMS alternatives that run over 3G/EDGE/GPRS/etc., when available, less convenient and straightforward to use on the phones' interfaces from a user experience perspective. Of course, the aggregators/clearinghouses have a stake in it too. SMS is widely used and nearly universal, but like anything else founded on the sort of inherent tension I just described, its days are numbered. I would encourage forward-thinking voice companies to help assist in its demise rather than spin their wheels and perpetuate it. You'll be that much the poorer. -- Alex Balashov - Principal Evariste Systems Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671