If you don‘t have a stamp at your fingertips you can send a Premium-SMS. As feedback you receive an SMS with a 11-number code. That code has to be written on the letter or poscard instead of the stamp … the rest is handled by the letter distribution centers of Deutsche Post.

But there‘s a catch: the stamp for a letter costs normally 55 euro-cents in Germany – the Premium-SMS for a letter costs at least 95 euro-cents. That‘s a hefty premium of 73% or more. Regarding postcards it‘s even more: 85 instead of 45 euro-cents is 89% premium or more. The user will be additionally charged for the costs of the SMS at his or her mobile provider.

It‘s clear for industry insiders, why Handyporto may be that expensive: The Deutsche Post is treated like every other mobile service provider and only get‘s a part of the revenue share of the 95 or 85 euro-cents: Basically, the Deutsche Post has to share their Handyporto-charges with the premium-SMS-serviceprovider – in this case the shortcode-SMS-number 22122 belongs to WHATEVER MOBILE in Hamburg, Germany. Additional the Deutsche Post also has to pay some cents for the code-SMS which is send back to the user. At last – there are a lot of expenses at the Deutsche Post itself for providing the infrastructure to recognize, process and validate the Handyporto-codes.
Therefor the higher price for Handyporto is comprehensible from a business point of view. But it‘s questionable whether the user benefit is big enogh to help Handyporto to be accepted and successful.

BTW just a brief remark to the marketing specialists: Don‘t do promotional Handyporto-FlashMobs again … that‘s contrary to nearly everything a FlashMob stands for.

Lemgo, a German town situated between Hannover and Dortmund, is testing a new mobile application in a field trial: By sending a 50-cent premium-SMS a street of houses can be illuminated for 15 minutes.
Many communities in Germany turn off their street lighting system from 11 pm to save energy and funds. It’s a bad solution for pedestrians at night, but a town like Lemgo saves about 50,000 Euro a year.
A Lemgo citizen came up with a brilliant solution which serves both needs: saving funds and lighting the streets for pedestrians late at night: A mobile application. Just send an SMS to the streetlight – respectively to a GSM-modem in the junction box – and the way home is illuminated. The new service is called Dial4Light and the inventor Dieter Grote cooperates with the Lemgo public services to bring the service into the market. The requests for the patent pending technology accumulate.
The inventor is thinking of many other areas of application: Emergency services can illuminate the scene. Taxi drivers can switch on the lights for their passengers. Joggers can turn on the floodlight at the sports field in the evening. Whether one premium-SMS is enough for turning on the floodlight stays open.
By the way: You can also buy car-parking tickets by mobile phone in Lemgo.

Sources: wdr.de, Handelsblatt-Ticker.de- Picture & Source: Dial4Light