Vodafone and MSN are working together on allowing MSN messenger users to communicate with Vodafone customers. Users of the two services will be able to send messages to each other, where mobile users will send and receive messages via SMS, which of course they will pay for.
Given that the average SMS costs around 10p this service users of this service will soon rack up a huge bill. It’s a pity that the service isn’t provided over GPRS/3G because if the average IM is 1KB then the cost would only be 0.22p per message rather than 10p.
I think this is a sign of things to come as the networks try to protect their revenues or are happy to only promote services that don’t canabalise their existing revenues – I think services like Skype over GPRS will struggle to get off the ground because the networks won’t support it.
