GigaOM

Spamming might be a deplorable and annoying practice, but mobile operators are willing to risk the ire of consumers because it acts as a big boost for their bottom line. “The more text messages received and sent by a subscriber, the more money the operator makes,” Bob Egan, CEO of consulting firm Mobile Competency tells Network World. He says that if the stop the spam, they loose revenue. So instead, they are stopping enough spam so that end users don’t feel overwhelmed. His argument is like virus prevention companies sponsoring virus makers. Nextel has seen the bad SMS increase to a level where it accounts from 45% to 60% of all SMS messages sent over its network. Carriers of course deny all this. Nextel thinks that its spam filters are getting better by the day. Being a Cingular subscriber, to be honest the only Spam I get is from Cingular, which is annoying like hell, but doesn’t cost me anything for now. If this problem, indeed becomes a vexing problem, I am pretty sure we will all hear the consumer displeasure.