Product Request: The Efficient Texting Service
I’ve got too many ideas. If you are an entrepreneur, or feel like you’ve got some entrepreneurial spirit in you, you know what I mean. I have too many products I want to develop and not enough time or money to do it. Most of these products are things that I really want developed and want to use. Because of this, from time to time I’ll just post the idea up on this blog and request that someone out there make this product to improve the world. Here is today’s product request.
The Efficient Texting Service
Problem: I’ve got an unlimited data plan on my phone. I can send emails around the world for free. So why am I paying $5 a month for 200 text messages per month? I can go to any site on the web! Why does a few lines of text have to cost me anything? We’re being ripped off.
Notes: You can send text messages from your email. Each wireless carrier has its own way of doing this or you could use a service called Teleflip where all you have to do is send an email to the phonenumber@teleflip.com (example: 9175556789@teleflip.com). Not only will your message be sent to that person’s phone, but also the replies will come back to your email.
Solution: Text Routing Service (TRS)
How it works: A simple piece of software is installed on your phone that has a data plan. This software takes any text message that you send out and instead of routing it through the phone networks, sends it out to phonenumber@TRS.com via your data plan. TRS then sends the message to the recipient as either a text message or an email depending on the recipient’s preferences. If the recipient doesn’t have a TRS account, then it just sends it as a text message. The reply to that text message would go through TRS as well and you could choose to receive replies as texts or emails.
The result would be that you would never pay for a text message you send out from your phone. It would always go through your data plan. If the recipient uses the same service, then you would be essentially emailing/chatting with each other for free. Isn’t that what texting really is?
This is just the basic idea and I’m not sure of all the technical details behind it. But there are smart programmers out there who can figure out how to do this well. Let me know if someone develops something like this. Not only will I be grateful, but will review and promote the program. So hop to it.
Temporary solution
I added an email address to the contact info of my friends who text a lot. This address is their cellnumber@teleflip.com. When they text me, I email them back via this address. That way, we keep on texting, but I’m not getting charged per text. It’s not a great workaround, but it works for now.
Nice write up man im right there with you and major kudos i have been using teleflip but i never thought to just add it to my friends contacts
Text messaging is the biggest ripoff in the industry. Instead of a workaround, it should just be included free with your phone or data plan. For the amount of data you send/receive to view a simple web page, you could have sent/received 100 text messages. It makes no sense. Here’s more:
http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html
@mileslocman Teleflip is awesome. I wish they would make an iPhone app.
@Barry Awesome article. Maybe NASA should go into the telecom business. That could offset the costs of our next Mars lander.
Great idea. I have unlimited texting on my iPhone 3G plan and it makes me feel — let’s say — violated. I know about teleflip and other workarounds but my gratuitous caffeine-intake says they are too frustrating. I have friends with cellular devices from the dark ages(they might as well carry around stone tablets), also, so AIM and email are out of the question.
Anywho, this sounds like an easy job for anyone with knowledge of Objective-C. Unfortunately, my coding skills are very crude at the moment, but if someone were to develop this, I would gladly jump on the bandwagon. This app would look increasingly good as Apple’s support of third-party PUSH approaches.
Oh, and don’t get me started on undeveloped product ideas. Many-a-time have I thought about taking my grant money to begin producing; I’ve reasoned to wait until I’m more educated though and, therefore, better able to execute them. I just hope my entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t mature and die.
It would get pulled from the App Store, just like the tethering app was in the US (but not in other countries where carriers don’t care whether you use your iPhone as a wireless modem for your laptop). They can also blacklist the app so it won’t work even if it slips through and a few people get it. Our best bet as far as this goes is if they get pegged with antitrust violations over text message prices.
That said, once I get a Mac maybe I will try making an app like this (I am a software engineer).
Looks like Teleflip is no longer working… the problem with an app like this is that it requires a server with bandwidth, and that has to be paid for somehow. If people wouldn’t mind ads appended to their text messages (and would actually pay attention to them enough that the advertisers would pay for it), it could be viable…