A Technical Digression

I thought it might be interesting (har!) to talk about the difference between MO and MT. Those readers who dislike anything tech-oriented may just want to skip all this. On the other hand, those who are actual techies might enjoy this. (The prospect of a non-techie discussing technicalities is always an opportunity for a good laugh.) So here goes.

When PSR was in originally in development (Smart's 9777 service), it was designed as a "mobile-originated" or MO system. The MO system is relatively simple: a text cannot be sent unless there is sufficient load.

To the Telco and the VAS Content Provider, MO makes accounting relatively simple. Number of texts received x Text Price = Total Revenue from the Value-Added Service.

I'm not sure how many VAS providers use this system but I would think a lot do. Under this system, the only point of accounting contention is the actual count of texts.

(Surprisingly, a lot of CP's report large discrepancies in their text count vs. that of the Telcos. This must mean that there are VAS providers that don't properly program MO systems or that there are Telcos that can't count, but as columnist Vic Agustin likes to say, "That is another story.")

MO does have its disadvantages. One of these is that there is a fixed charge per text. As we discovered when we tried to launch the PSR 9778 service, which has a variable charge depending on the amount of the Official Receipt, we needed to write a different program for the new service.

Enter the MT or mobile-terminated system. In this system, the sender's text is sent to the CP's server, which checks on how much to charge the sender. The "charge" is then forwarded to the Telco's server. If the charge is approved, the Telco server "replies" to the CP server, which then sends an appropriate Acknowledgement Text to the sender.

Since the Telco server was involved in the process, presumably all charges are captured and there is even less room for any discrepancies between Telco count and that of the VAS provider.

One disadvantage of this system is the number of texts that need to be sent back and forth, which can lead to system clogging. I guess this is one reason why Telcos now have servers with speeds measured in Texts Per Second or TPS.

The Smart 9778 system was therefore designed and launched as an MT system. I still have to check but this might have been the first VAS with a variable charge ranging from P6.00 to P1,500 (since the minimum is a P350 Official Receipt or 4 raffle entries and the maximum is a P100,000 Official Receipt or 1,000 raffle entries).

When we began discussions with Globe, it was clear that it would not be possible to do exactly the same thing as Smart. Both Globe's 9777 and 9778 services are MT, something they demand from all their CP's.

In the case of the Globe 9778 service though, it was not possible to send in a completely variable charge. Instead, the amount charged needed to fit one or more of Globe's existing "baskets" for mobile charges. These baskets ranged from P1.50, P2.50, P3.00, P4.50, P5.00, P10.00, P15.00, P30.00, etc.

Thus, a charge for 5 raffle entries or P7.50 might mean an initial charge of P5.00 followed by a second charge of P2.50 (since there is no P7.50 basket). Of course, the disadvantage of this is that there are now even more texts flying around the system.

On the other hand, the plus side is that a text entry with only enough load to partially cover the total raffle entries would still get partial approval, while in the Smart 9778 case, it was "all or nothing."

As one can imagine from all the above, the PSR program really had to break new ground in the software development side of its text handling systems. Little wonder that Smart 9778 was launched almost two months after 9777, while the dual Globe MT service took about 5 weeks to develop.

I should add a final word about Sun. What they have is an MO system, making it difficult to give them a 9778 service. Technically, a Sun subscriber who buys something for P100,000 would need to send in 1,000 texts to fully avail of their raffle entry entitlements. Interestingly, we haven't heard any complaints from their subscribers.