The carriers were taking about 70% in tariffs and fees even without you bribing them to get better positioning. That’s why all the mobile app people rushed to Apple in the early days. They could actually turn a profit on the App Store.

If probably be retired now if I wasn’t already so burnt out on how SMS tariffs worked at the time. Utterly opaque and on a delay. They basically wrote you a check for however much they felt like each month.

Essentially the reseller arm of carriers at that time was just a money funnel from VCs to the telcos. They were eating their own young and I was full up on the bullshit.