Mobile Phone Spam?

Last night I received what I think is the first case of mass mobile phone SPAM in Qatar. In the early evening I got an SMS from 3406819963 which said:

CONGRATULATIONS! LOTTERY WINNER

Your mobile number attached to ticker number 5XX-XX won US$1.116,000.00

Call:00346-6-819-963.

lotterypostwin/-a-t-/malaysia.com

I thought "Oh man...now we're into mobile phone spam" and forgot about. Then, later this evening my friend with me received the exact same message. Now our two numbers are totally unrelated in sequence. Also, I'm a contract user and she's got a pay as you go account. I'm wondering if they are just SMSing a whole range of Q-Tel phone numbers just to see who will catch.

With e-mail we are now sort of oblivious to spam. It comes and goes and we don't really bother with it. But with this, it's a bit different since the message may catch you off guard and you may think that the message is from some real competition they entered. Worse still, most modern mobile phones highlight numbers so you may accidently dial it.

I'd be interested in the economics of this sort of scam. Surely it's costing the scammers a few cent per SMS message? I suppose the premium price number (I'm assuming it's a premioum price number in Spain since +34 is the Spanish country code) just has to be set at a high enough price point.

Over and above the economics, I'm also wondering about the liability of the mobile carrier. SMS is not like e-mail - the carrier should accept some liability and they can reliably trace who sent the message.

So did anyone else get the message? I'd be interested to know how many of you actually received it (any if anyone actually fell for it!).