Keynote: U.S. Mobile Phone Networks Lose 7.5 Percent of SMS Messages
Keynote Systems, a company that analyzes Internet service performance, has come out with its first study of the reliability of Short Message Service messages that are sent and received via mobile telephones. This study attempts to measure the performance of U.S. mobile phone carriers. According to a press release, 7.5 percent of all messages generated for the study never reached their intended destination. This is an astoundingly high percentage, but not outside the realm of possibility in our experience.
CTDATA sends and receives thousands of SMS messages on a monthly basis. We have built an internal application that uses SMS as its primary transport mechanism. We have active users on AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and T-Mobile.
We urge SMS users to read the study and contact their provider if network performance is unacceptable. We will be in touch with T-Mobile about their spotty performance tomorrow.