MIG was behind the charity donation text service and supported negotiations for a ground breaking deal with all five of the UK's mobile network operators (MNOs) to waive their fees and the VAT on the texts so that the money went directly to the charity.

This has been great news, but has prompted something of a groundswell of opinion in the charity sector that all charities should benefit from free SMS donations.

Rob Weisz, MIT's Commercial Director ran negotiations for the deal with the MNOs, for Comic Relief, but is not so sure that making text free for all charities is such a feasible idea. "The MNOs have been very generous and supportive, and have agreed to look at offering a free SMS donation service on a case by case basis," he says. "But it's a fine balance. They can't offer it free for everyone. Charities are being pretty bullish, and doing this does carry a cost to the MNO that has to be met and offering it free to all charities is simply not feasible."

"What is interesting is that the MNO's are now putting in a process to offer VAT exempt billing through shortcodes for Charities. However, this shouldn't stop at charities, consideration needs to be taken into account for other VAT exempt sectors such as the Gambling and Lottery sectors.

Putting this issue aside, Comic Relief service has done wonders in reintroducing users to text on TV as a safe and effective interactive medium, while it has also ushered in the use of text to donate money to a broad reach of consumers, who may never have interacted via mobile before.

"It truly was a mass market uptake of text payment," says Weisz. "Everyone talks about Apps, WAP and mobile web, but for the vast majority of people, text is still the tool of interaction and it offers a great value product. Comic Relief showed people that premium rate SMS is a safe and effective tool. This is a tremendous step on the way to the Holy Grail of offering mobile as a means of paying for media subscriptions, goods and services."

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