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by closeparen 3149 days ago
Ever tried to get an SS7 connection?

Sure, you can rent access from Twilio, in the same way that you can rent access from Facebook. It’s extremely unlikely that you could ever become a full participant in either network.

2 comments

Okay, so there's a high barrier to entry. It's pretty hard to become an ISP too. That doesn't make either a walled garden.

It's not so much about whether I personally could federate with the network, as it is about whether some reasonably large number of other entities could. I don't have exact numbers, but it seems there are 1000+ phone providers worldwide.

SMS isn't perfect, but it isn't really comparable to Facebook's chains.