Advanced mobile broadband consortium m.Net Corporation today announced the launch of its operator-neutral Premium SMS Gateway Service, available to application developers and service providers across all three major Australian telecommunications networks.

m.Net will offer the unified Premium SMS Gateway to developers both as a test-bed and as a commercial network service reaching more than 90 percent of mobile phone users. The service provides a proven user-pays business model for application developers and service providers to deliver revenue-generating premium services that go beyond the competitions favoured by existing gateway services. m.Net’s gateway enables pay-for-view services such as polling, real estate information, new age services, sports scores, breaking news, public transport timetables, ringtones, and games. One of the first services, HPrice, allows users to access real estate information such as the last sales price and suburb average simply by SMSing the address to a premium phone number. The model is similar in concept to the 1900 premium voice service whereby revenue is captured through the mobile operator’s billing relationship with its subscribers, but allows for greater flexibility. m.Net Corporation CEO Horden Wiltshire said that m.Net’s relationships with Australia’s major carriers, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, allows the company to create a unified environment that provides the scalability needed to guarantee service to high-value customers, while reducing operational costs for developers and service providers. “The alternative would be for each gateway user to form individual connections and relationships with each carrier at substantial cost for gateway setup, as well as ongoing fees,” Mr Wiltshire said. “The Premium SMS Gateway makes it fast and easy for application and service developers to commercialise their offerings and make them available on-demand to almost every mobile user in Australia.” m.Net consortium members have an unparalleled range and depth of experience in deploying wireless infrastructure. “We see premium SMS as a stepping stone to rich media 3G service offerings in the future,” Mr Wiltshire said. “Premium SMS offers a means for third party application developers and content providers to generate revenues from these services and will serve as an important indicator of the services that customers will value in the rich media environment “We back up our technical know-how with experience in developing business models and commercial scenarios, and our growing user behaviour research competency.”