SMS xyz to *1234* .. how is it different from an SMS to a friend ?

Couple of months ago, I was watching a commercial on TV (in which Hritik dances with a gorgeous woman). I liked the music very much. I observed some text scrolling at the bottom of the screen with instructions on how to download that music as a ringtone.

I was very excited, grabbed my mobile and sent an SMS as per instructions,downloaded the tone and played it on my mobile. After I played the tone, I didn't like the ringtone much and to add to my disappointment I realized that I was charged about Rs 7/- !! (which is about 5 times the price that I pay if I sent an SMS to a friend :-( )

How is such an SMS different from a normal SMS ? How am I charged and who's charging me? Is it the service provider or the vendor of the service (ringtones, wallpapers, etc)? What's happening technically behind the scenes ? As usual, there are too many questions that made me explore :-)

In this context, let me recollect one of my favorite quips which goes like this:

"I learnt only A,B,C,D at school,
rest everything, I learnt from Google ;-)"

I searched through web, does a lot of reading and found out how things work and here are the details for you:

In SMS terms, there is a concept called "reverse billing". For example, suppose you want to develop a commercial ringtone download application that charges a fee from the user for each ringtone downloaded. One way to accept payment is to use a reverse billing phone number obtained from a wireless carrier.

To buy a ringtone, the user will write an ordinary SMS text message that contains the ID of the ringtone he/she wants to buy and send it to your SMS application's reverse billing phone number. Your SMS application will then send back one or more reverse billing SMS messages that carry the ringtone. The user will be charged a fee for the reverse billing SMS messages he/she received. The fee will be included in the user's monthly mobile phone bill or be deducted from his/her prepaid card credits. Depending on the agreement between you and the wireless carrier, all or part of the money received will be given to you :-)

After having known this fact, everytime I see ads asking people to vote for someone (most common questions are: "Will India win the match? Will Sachin score 100 ? Vote for someone in a reality show and let the participant win a competition , blah, blah.. ) I laugh at some of the questions and I pity those SMSing to such questions..

Boss, after all it's money, your money, so please spend it for some useful stuff.. do some charity or do something that gives you some satisfaction :-)

In my opinion, dowloading a ringtone is, in a way, better than sending SMS saying that a cricketer will score a 100 or some political party will win the election or some silly stuff like these, isn't it? (no pun intended, please don't get me wrong! )

Okay, let me not influence your thinking, all I wanted to say is, here is a very good article on SMS - Introduction to SMS messaging Hope you find this useful :-)