25 April, 2010

No more SMS to Australia

For some reason or another Etisalat and Telstra, Australia's largest telco have decided that their customers being able to SMS each other is somehow not a worthwhile service...

"In another amazing move in the telcommunications world Etisalat has, according to the customer service operator..."through mutual aggreement have discontinued SMS between Telstra and Etisalat indefinately, sorry for the inconvenience"
--more here

Link thanks to anon

8 comments:

Kyle said...

not a worthwhile service...

Since when texting was not a worthwhile service?

That apart, I think there's more to this story than meets the eye.

Take the current case of Youtube, megaupload, rapidshare; all of these -- I won't say blocked -- but the data flowing through is down to a trickle. I wonder which undersea cable is being spliced now for a little cloak & dagger entertainment!

Dave said...

Apparently the contract between Telstra in Australia and Etisalat "is no longer applicable" according to a representative from Etisalat that we contacted. The problem would not be with Telstra, they are an extremely profitable company that would not take these measures.

That only leaves one other party involved....

Anonymous said...

@dave
etisalat is not profitable? r u serious? do google etisalat's earnings and plz read.

btw i did follow the link in the original post and its disturbing to see the talk abt 1432 and rocks to wipe oneself! man sm ppl down under are so.... narrow minded. and i shudder to think some of those disturbed folks might be walking in our midst right here in the uae... :-/

Anonymous said...

What is even stranger is that there doesn't seem to be any problem with SMS coming from Telstra to Etisalat, only going - I'd suggest that this is firmly an issue at the UAE end only and something to do with our near monopoly service provider (if I can't take my number to Du - then it is effectively a monopoly).

Dave said...

Anon at 22:25. I understand that Etisalat is profitable..... as a state-owned monopoly how could they not be? But I believe their profits are being distributed to other parts of the quasi-Govt entities where the "greater need" may exist.

It is also true that Du has no problem with SMS's to Oz and vice versa.

unJane said...

I've never been able to text family in the US on the Verizon network. I've checked in the US. They don't know where the problem lies. Do you??

blue-eyed floozy said...

unJane, when I was living in the US I used to have the same problem texting from there to here - on Verizon, too. It sounded like, from the help center emails, they just don't have a... contract? agreement?... between Verizon and etisalat. Have never tried to text to a du number.

Sorry, that's not a helpful, definite answer, but I do share your issue.

Dave said...

Believe it or not SMS messages between Etisalat and Telstra are NOW WORKING!!!! Did someone up there listen? Was it the complaints that were lodged with Aust Consulate that helped? Or was it this blog site? Who knows, but now all is well in the SMS sphere between Oz and the UAE.

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