premium sms

[denby]

is this possible

i want people to be able to text me

"1" or "2" etc

then i want them to be charged a different rate for each number

the number they text must be short something along the lines of "83303"


how would i go about this ? and is it expensive?

thanks in advance

 

[PMWD]

You'd need a keyword before the numbers to assign it to your account and that keyword rate would dicate how much they got charged.

To do it without you'd probably need a dedicated short code number and that would probably be very expensive, and even then I doubt you'd be able to vary the rate as it'd have to be in all your t&cs.

 

[NickK]

Yes this will be more expensive than you're probably expecting.

You'll want to talk to a content aggregator.

The operator owns the subscriber billing. Some aggregators offer more flexible interfaces for billing.

Two ways todo this:
1. Have a central number that you receive the text on. Then issue premium content via another short code. The operator will then bill according to that shortcode rate. If the subscriber has credit then the message will get through otherwise you'll get a response indicating a failure to submit the message.
Some operators/aggregators can bill against parameters in the submit - that's usually specific to the aggregator/operator.

2. Connect to an operator directly that provides a billing interface. This will be very expensive in terms of contracted price and legal bills.. not to mention penalties for abuse etc.
Not many operators provide this, and certainly no operator will provide this to non-partnered companies (trust/financial/legal will probably mean it's not viable for you).

Technically this can be done simplistically. However the cost is likely to be prohibitive.