Comment Posted on Pondering Primate

The Pondering Primate informed me of the Press Release regarding 6 digit short codes and gave a nice plug for www.usshortcodeswhois.com as well.

You can read my response below or even better read his post and comments at the source: http://theponderingprimate.blogspot.com/2006/02/short-codes-grow-to-6-digits.html

This is indeed news for brands. The press release touts this as "increasing the amount of usable CSCs to nearly one million," but the lack of available 5 digit numbers in the United States is definitely not the reason for this. It is doubtful that more than 10% of the US five digit codes were in use. (Only 130 have been found and listed on www.usshortcodeswhois.com so far) This is not about expanding the number of available CSCs, this is about expanding the number of brands who can get a vanity code required to convert a brand name to a sequence of keypad numbers.

I don't envision a rush to register codes. At $1000 per month for a vanity code, as opposed to $500 per month for a random code, it is not cheap. And this is only part of the cost. An aggregator is required to get access to carriers, increasing monthly and setup costs. This is not like registering and parking a domain for $2.99 and waiting for Google to come along and buy 466453.