It would have cost the "yes" campaign for same-sex marriage at least $620,000 to send its bulk text message to all 31 million mobile phone subscribers at the weekend, Fairfax Media can reveal.
Depending on the deal it struck with its bulk SMS supplier, it could have cost even as much as $4.65 million or more, given that messages were sent to potentially more numbers than exist or are currently in use.
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In June 2015, there were an estimated 31.01 million mobile phones subscribers in Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The figure is more than Australia's population given that many people have more than one phone (for work and personal use).
Given that the "yes" messages were sent by randomly generating Australian mobile numbers (read: not using a distribution list), and that the cheapest rate for sending more than 1 million texts in bulk in Australia is 2 cents a message, the texts would have cost at least $620,000 if they were to hit the 31.01 million subscribers that exists, making one Australian bulk SMS supplier a neat fortune.
And given that the mobile numbers were randomly generated, it's possible that even more money was spent in order to send a message to every possible combination of numbers. What is more likely, however, is that the campaign selected common '04' number prefixes such as 0414, 0400, 0412 and 0401 to reduce its bill and the likely number of mobile numbers it sent its message to in support of a '"yes"' vote.
Campaignhub.com.au's rate is 15 cents a text message, thereby costing $4.65 million if all 31.01 million Australian subscribers were sent an SMS. Meanwhile, Bulksms.com.au's is 8 cents a text, costing $2.48m. Smsbroadcast.com.au's rate is 2 cents, costing $620,000.
The "yes" campaign refused to detail the cost of the campaign to Fairfax Media on Tuesday. It's possible the campaign could have capped the messages to a certain amount of randomly generated numbers, although anecdotally the percentage of Australians reached is quite high.
The campaign also refused to disclose who its donors were and whether they were informed that messages sent to numbers that did not exist would still have cost them money.
"The campaign is using every resource available to make sure fairness and equality are achieved for all Australians," Alex Greenwich, co-chair of the Equality Campaign said.
"The campaign has a responsibility to encourage every Australian to post their survey and we have done this through doorknocking, media, advertising, social media and SMS messaging.
"It's so important to reach as many Australians as possible and remind them this is a vote about fairness and ensuring every Australian is equal under the law."
As has been previously reported, the "yes" campaign's message did not breach any regulations in sending the text because it was of a political nature and the law exempts such communications from being classified as spam. It also did not breach privacy laws, as the numbers were not acquired from a list but randomly generated.
Know more? Email the author or contact him on Wickr (bengrubbsmh) or Signal.
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