Guest asif @ planus Posted March 25, 2003 Report Posted March 25, 2003 Hi All, Just to let everyone know, we have now finished plans for the new retroSPV, which will be released on the day of the MoDaCo Meet. You can see the new info at: www.retroFONE.info ---or--- if that doesn't work for you yet (moving servers), you can see it at http://retrofone.retrodns.net If you have any feedback or questions, please post here. Also, if you would subscribe to this sort of thing, please post here so we have an idea of numbers. Thank you very Much. Regards Asif Alibhai MD, RetroGroupInternational
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted March 25, 2003 Report Posted March 25, 2003 Looks good, nice to see how some of our member ideas can become successful business ventures. Good luck to you, i'll certainly be signing up, got to try and keep up with my gf without running up huge bills :)
Guest fozzie Posted March 25, 2003 Report Posted March 25, 2003 Definitely interested in signing up. When will you start taking subscription requests?
Guest ajb3000 Posted March 25, 2003 Report Posted March 25, 2003 As soon as it goes live we will start taking subscriptions, there will be no preregistration or anything like that. As long as everything goes according to plan it will go live during the MoDaCo meet on April 12th.
Guest Devil Posted March 26, 2003 Report Posted March 26, 2003 Mmmmm......... 3.85p per text message seems hefty. 360 for £24 with Orange, 390 for £15 with retrofone. That works out at 6.67p per message with Orange, admittedly with the 360 bundle. So lower volume users will see a greater saving with retrofone. But, given the unproven reliability of this service, I need a bit more assurance. Q: Will the text message get to another mobile phone as quick as a normal text message or will it be lost in the ether for an as yet unquantifiable period of time? Q: Will the receiving mobile be able to tell that it has been sent from a web based service (IE will there be unwanted text added to the message) or will it look identical to a normal sms from their perspective? Q: Has the issue of the contacts not automatically using the existing ones from the phone been sorted out? Q: Has the issue of sent text messages not appearing in the sent items message folder been sorted out? I know I sound like a winger, but they are valid concerns, and given that a normal sms satisfies all of the above criteria is it really gonna' be worth my while? :evil:
Guest HelloDave Posted March 26, 2003 Report Posted March 26, 2003 My guesses - Q: Will the text message get to another mobile phone as quick as a normal text message or will it be lost in the ether for an as yet unquantifiable period of time?I would think it would be recieved quickly - supposedly the problems before were due to the SMS gateway going down becuase they wouldn't accept payment from RetroFone (something to do with PayPal I think) Q: Will the receiving mobile be able to tell that it has been sent from a web based service (IE will there be unwanted text added to the message) or will it look identical to a normal sms from their perspective? If it's similar to the original service then it should look identical - you can send a message "from" your number, and if the free service didn't include adverts I doubt a subscription one will! Q: Has the issue of the contacts not automatically using the existing ones from the phone been sorted out?I would imagine so; they may have used the scripts I wrote for the original free gateway to generate a contact list. Q: Has the issue of sent text messages not appearing in the sent items message folder been sorted out? I doubt it very much; this is a web based service, and you'd need an app to do that (possibly a priveliged one). Could save your messages to the server I suppose. I know I sound like a winger, but they are valid concerns, and given that a normal sms satisfies all of the above criteria is it really gonna' be worth my while? It's half the cheapest price Orange can offer - sounds good to me! Asif/Adam: seeing as I wrote a fair bit of the javascript for Adam's original retroFone HTML access pages, and the screenshots on the site look suspiciously like the old version with some fields added, how about a few extra free SMSs per month? :) You know you want to! :wink:
Guest v1nn1e Posted March 26, 2003 Report Posted March 26, 2003 I thought there is a retrofone program?
Guest asif @ planus Posted March 26, 2003 Report Posted March 26, 2003 Hi, I'm in a rush at the moment, but just to inform you, messages will be rolled over every month. Therefore, if you are on Tariff 4, and you only use 75 Messages, 55 will be carried over, so you will have 185 on the next month. Andy, I have contacted you :) Yes, there will be a more advanced frontend to the retroSPV Gateway. Best Regards, Asif
Guest ajb3000 Posted March 26, 2003 Report Posted March 26, 2003 Q: Will the text message get to another mobile phone as quick as a normal text message or will it be lost in the ether for an as yet unquantifiable period of time?There is no reason why a text message should be delayed in getting to the recipient, the previous problems were due to using different gateways and billing issues. The initial free service is to show that it will be reliable. In the unlikely event of temporary delays occuring, it will be posted on the website. Q: Will the receiving mobile be able to tell that it has been sent from a web based service (IE will there be unwanted text added to the message) or will it look identical to a normal sms from their perspective? There will be no unwanted text added, it will look identical to an SMS sent from your phone. Q: Has the issue of the contacts not automatically using the existing ones from the phone been sorted out?At the moment we are using the same script as before, so you have to import your contacts from a .csv file you create with outlook. We want this to be completely HTML based so as all users, even with cert locked phones can run it, and as such we cannot import the contacts list directly from the phones memory. Q: Has the issue of sent text messages not appearing in the sent items message folder been sorted out? This isn't really an issue, it just isn't a feature. The sent items folder is part of the SMS program on the phone, this program doesn't have one as it's completely web based. I know I sound like a winger, but they are valid concerns, and given that a normal sms satisfies all of the above criteria is it really gonna' be worth my while? Thats completely up to you, this service is cheaper the Orange and has the ability to delay SMS (a feature requested by a user of the previous service), and send Flashing SMS, aswell as anonymous SMS. You decide. One more point, we decided we wanted the service to be as cheap as possible, which is why you don't get cheaper SMS if you buy more.
Guest amaidment Posted March 26, 2003 Report Posted March 26, 2003 I'd definitely be interested too. As for people with concerns, why not try one of the cheap packages at first, and if you don't like it stop. If you think the service is worth it then change to the package that suits you.
Guest Anonymous Posted March 27, 2003 Report Posted March 27, 2003 Thanks for your response I guess most people on this forum have de-certed their phones, given this, would it be possible to have a version that grabs the actual contacts, and automatically transfers sent messages to the Sent Items folder? It's nice to have a record of those drunken texts when you have no recollection of them in the morning......... :twisted:
Guest ajb3000 Posted March 30, 2003 Report Posted March 30, 2003 This is something we may look into, however it will not be possible initially. UPDATE: The creator of OrnetaNotepad has stated he doesn't think it's possible to grab the contacts list directly from the phone. So it seems very doubtfull that this will even be a possibility.
Guest The_Brickster Posted March 31, 2003 Report Posted March 31, 2003 Would it be possible to do a one off purchase of text credits? If I was on Tariff 3 and have 65 texts a month, but one month I used a load more than normal, would it be possible to buy, say, another 65 texts for a one off fee of £2.50?
Guest ajb3000 Posted March 31, 2003 Report Posted March 31, 2003 The_Brickster, we were thinking about that and as such have slightly changed the way it's going to work. Expect a press release later today (tomorrow at the latest).
Guest mcwarre Posted March 31, 2003 Report Posted March 31, 2003 Where (and how) can I sign up?? Anything to save money..............
Guest Anonymous Posted April 1, 2003 Report Posted April 1, 2003 There is a new thread on the Main board announcing Planus Telecommunications. This is the new name for the service, and it has all the details on how to be included in the trial etc.
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