On Friday, word got out that come November 1 Verizon Wireless plans to tack on an extra 3-cent charge for every SMS message sent by Web information services to any of its mobile subscribers. That hike will be on top of the 20 cents per message that Verizon subscribers already pay (even those with “unlimited” plans). Thus, in one fell swoop, Verizon is attempting to boost its SMS revenues by about 15 percent.

While it may be good for Verizon, the additional charge is not good for any service that sends out millions of SMS messages each month. The move caught a lot of Internet companies, SMS aggregators, and media companies by surprise. For instance, I asked Twitter co-founder Biz Stone what impact it would have on the micro-blogging service, which lets users keep up with every Tweet they follow via SMS, and he didn’t know:

We’re still investigating with Verizon so I don’t have a definite answer for you right now.

Mobile Marketer is reporting that Verizon Wireless has "decided to levy a 3-cent transaction fee for every outbound SMS message sent to its subscriber base". One of the immediate questions is whether the other carriers will follow suit. For some marketers this charge is double or triple what they are currently paying. The article explains that this will affect a variety of service providers, "The rate increase will affect heavy users of legitimate outbound SMS messaging in the entertainment, retail, sports, news, weather, travel, food and political sectors. But it will also affect the mobile service providers they use to send out messages, such as SMS aggregators, providers and agencies."

Verizon Wireless says this is the first increase since 2003. B. Raney, executive director of corporate communications at Verizon Wireless said of the price increase, "Just like any business, we reassess our charges to make sure they align with our costs for providing the service and sometimes it becomes necessary to make adjustments".

NYC mobile blogger Dean Collins notes, "Basically Verizon have slammed shut the SMS industry in the USA".

My question is will this sms message increase affect Twitter? If it does, how will Twitter react? We know Twitter stopped offering SMS service in the UK because the costs were apparently $1,000/yr for 250 messages per week per user.

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The iPhone may be the only game in town for serious mobile Web developers right now, but that won’t last ling. Next year, the iPhione will see some serious competition from Google’s Android platform. Of course, T-Mobile will start selling the first Android phone, the G1 made by HTC, on October 22. But other cell phone manufacturers are gearing up for a major Android push.

The most significant of these may come from Motorola. One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team. That is a huge commitment that shows how big a bet Motorola is making on Android.

This same source has also seen people from Nokia and Verizon at a recent Android developer conference.

AOL is announcing that their Platform-A advertising group will manage the mobile and online advertising for Verizon today. Platform-A will manage all of Verizon’s online advertising and most of the mobile advertising as well.

AOL also notes, "Platform-A will be the only sales organization that can represent Verizon’s inventory in the marketplace and guarantee placement within the Verizon network."

No indication was provided on total number of advertising impressions this deal covers.

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