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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cfoe who wrote (31678)	1/24/2003 7:13:21 PM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196554

Wireless Giants Open the Border for Text Messaging Fri Jan 24, 1:24 PM ET story.news.yahoo.com Jay Wrolstad , Wireless.NewsFactor.com Wireless carriers in the United States and Canada are reaching out to each other through a new text-messaging pact. On Thursday, the major players in both countries launched commercial inter-carrier messaging services that let customers use their mobile phones to exchange text messages with their peers to the north or south. This hands-across-the-border agreement will further drive short message service (SMS) traffic and revenue, which have grown by leaps and bounds since U.S. carriers instituted an inter-carrier agreement of their own earlier this year, Verizon Wireless spokesperson Jeffrey Nelson told NewsFactor. "SMS really took off after U.S. carriers offered interoperability, and we are experiencing double-digit growth every month," Nelson said. He cited increased functionality of mobile phones and improved SMS user experience as contributing to this growth. Crowded Bandwagon Canada's four national service providers -- Bell Mobility, Microcell Solutions (Fido), Rogers AT&T Wireless and Telus Mobility -- have agreed to offer the service. Other operators, including Aliant Mobility, Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) and SaskTel Mobility regional carriers, are following suit. Participating carriers in the United States currently include AT&T Wireless (NYSE: AWE - news), Cingular, Nextel (Nasdaq: NXTL - news), Sprint PCS (NYSE: PCS - news), T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. Each carrier is expected to handle its own billing, with price plans ranging from per-message charges to flat-fee SMS bundles. Today Canada, Tomorrow the World The pact with Canadian operators serves as the first step toward meeting the demand for global inter-carrier messaging services that will eventually include multimedia messaging, AT&T Wireless spokesperson Ritch Blasi told NewsFactor. AT&T Wireless has seen a 300 percent increase in text messaging since the introduction of U.S. interoperability. "It represents a good portion of our data revenue," Blasi said. It is no secret that text messaging is huge among wireless customers who enjoy sending and receiving the short, often clever notes, especially in Europe and parts of Asia. Yankee Group analyst Linda Barrabee told NewsFactor that the United States is playing catch-up with Europe, where SMS is a US$12 billion market compared with "several hundred million" in North America. Nice Neighbors "Agreements like this one further the idea of SMS ubiquity and will certainly fuel growth," Barrabee said. "Messaging is viral; carriers need roaming to create value for their customers who want to send messages without wondering if the person receiving them is on the same network." SMS is widely recognized as a service favored by hip, younger customers for "chatting" with their friends, but both Nelson and Blasi said it has been adopted as a business tool as well, especially among members of the mobile workforce. Phenomenon in the Making Canadian carriers, like their American counterparts, have experienced a phenomenal increase in SMS traffic, according to Marc Choma of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. He told NewsFactor that the number of text messages sent has soared to 21 million per month in December from 10 million last March, following an inter-carrier agreement in that country. While he could not specify the amount of wireless communications traffic between the two nations, Choma noted that 90 percent of Canadians live close to the U.S. border, and that all of the Canadian carriers already have roaming agreements with U.S. operators. "I think this will be pretty big," Verizon's Nelson said. "I expect that traffic across the border will provide a boost to our messaging business." ----- Nothing wrong with this other than that it was so late in coming. Now, what we really need is this same cooperation and compatibility for MMS. Exchanging pictures only with others on the same carrier will keep camera phones from growing at their maximum rate and to their maximum potential.