Announced last March by the CTIA, the Latin America Common Short Code (CSC) initiative had a single goal: to create a single short-code system that covered the entire Latin American market. Supported by the major operators in the region, and powered by technology from Syniverse, the system has officially been launched today. We take a closer look.
Syniverse?
Syniverse Technologies has been around since the late 1980s, and provides technology directly to telecommunications companies – including around 800 mobile operators, ISPs and other enterprises. One of the many things that Syniverse works with is mobile messaging, including SMS and MMS – and it is this capability that interested the CTIA and Latin American operators.
What has Syniverse built them?
Very simple, it’s a short code system that every single operator in Latin America can tap into. Short codes themselves are shorter and easier numbers to remember than regular mobile numbers. The length of the code depends on the country and the operators involved. Here in Ireland, for example, short codes are 5 digits long, and always start with the number 5. The Syniverse deployment in Latin America will provide 6-digit short codes, and those codes will work the same in any country, as long as your operator is part of the CSC initiative – led by led by America Movil and Telefónica, it claims to be able to reach 500 million people.
What we think?
Registrations to get the short code you want are now being accepted in over twenty Latin American countries. I can only imagine that there is going to be a huge rush for the best short codes – much of the Latin America mobile market is still in development stages, and SMS is a massively popular medium. The CTIA claims that the rate of SMS use in LATAM is almost twice as high as other regions, with almost 70% of mobile subscribers sending texts at least twice weekly.
The thing about short codes is that they can be used for many of the same purposes as mobile barcodes. By printing a short code on something, you make it interactive. A wonderful example of that is from Metro stations in Shanghai – passengers in these stations could get station and travel information by texting the shortcode. The CSC programme will allow previously unseen opportunities for SMS-powered mobile marketing in the region.
Anchor mobile will be one of the first to offer shared short codes in Latin America with they’re robust sms white label application
Is Syniverse providing the connectivity also? Just because you can get a shortcode that covers 500M users does not mean you can actually delivery to 500M users. What sort of shortcode approval process is there? What about connectivity to the networks? Does any aggregator support the whole LA? Does the CSC include SMS, PSMS, MMS?
There is massive potential here…
it seems like the CTIA is just an organization from the U.S. that is not even necessary. They charge you $500 to $1000 to “register” a CSC (short code) for Latin America and you pay the money whether you can use it with the carrier in each region or not and there are NO refunds. It makes NO SENSE to pay to register a CSC if you then in turn have to go to EACH carrier to see if it will work.