Even though short-message service (SMS) communication is called wireless instant-messaging (IM) by some, the technology really isn't instant. But according to a new study from Internet performance management services provider Keynote Systems, SMS is getting speedier.
The company's Wireless SMS Index of intra-carrier messaging -- messages sent and received on the same carrier network -- for the second quarter of 2002 shows improvement over the year's first quarter. The SMS services provided by the big 6 carriers in the U.S. "generally performs well and reliably," the benchmarking firm said.
The average message-delivery time for all carriers was 11.8 seconds. Of the specific carriers measured, AT&T Wireless led the group with at 7.1 seconds , followed by Verizon Wireless (7.8 seconds), Cingular Wireless (7.9 seconds), Sprint PCS (12.7 seconds), T-Mobile/VoiceStream (14.2 seconds) and Nextel (24.6 seconds).
In that same time frame, an average of 94.7 percent of all messages arrived at their destination. In this group, Verizon Wireless came in first at 98.5 percent of network availability, followed by Nextel (96.9 percent), AT&T Wireless (96.2 percent), Cingular Wireless (93.9 percent), T-Mobile/VoiceStream (92.3 percent) and Sprint PCS (90.1 percent).
That 94.7 percent availability figure, though, could represent a significant loss of information and business when the actual number of lost messages is calculated, Keynote said. If 4 billion messages were sent in the U.S. alone in June of 2002 (a figure that's probably not far away from the actual number, as Mobile Lifestreams projected that 4 billion messages would be sent in all of North America in December of 2001), then more than 200 million messages were lost, based on the 94.7 percent figure.
To determine the performance of intra-carrier messaging, Keynote uses wireless devices from all major networks and sends messages between carriers, measuring the time it takes for a message to be received from a mobile originate to a mobile terminate handset. Measurements are taken from multiple locations across the U.S.
In all of 2002, the number of active SMS users will total 13.4 million -- a number expected to increase to 95.1 million in 2006, partly because of cross-carrier, or inter-carrier SMS. All of the big 6 U.S. wireless carriers now offer interoperability among their networks, meaning that an AT&T Wireless subscriber can text a T-Mobile subscriber, for example -- all by just using a user's 10-digit phone number. Previously, some cross-carrier SMS traffic had been possible, but the process usually involved using a very large address in the "To:" field.
Keynote also said it will later this year launch a new cross-carrier SMS benchmark. The measurements will be taken automatically every sixty minutes using the Keynote Wireless Perspective service. The Keynote Wireless SMS Benchmark addresses the problems presented by sending messages between networks, and is designed to give carriers a benchmark for continued improvement of transfer of messages between all carriers to provide consistent and reliable performance for customers using SMS.
Bob Woods is the managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.
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