Originally published July 24 2005
Cell phone text messaging expanding worldwide
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Cell phone "texting" is often the primary cell phone application in parts of Europe and Asia. Companies like Mobile365 Inc. handle the transfers of text messages for between 1.5 to 2 billion phones per day.
But to many people in much of the rest of the world, wireless phones as text-messaging tools are more important.
In fact, cell phone "texting," as Derek Tam calls it, is often the primary cell phone application in parts of Europe and Asia.
Tam is the chief technology officer for a company called Mobile365 Inc. (www.mobile365.com), which handles the transfer of text messages between wireless service carriers like Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile.
"We do the interoperability between networks, so if you're on the Verizon network and are sending a text message to a T-Mobile customer, you'll be using Mobile365," Tam said.
It won't be long, for example, until you're able to walk up to a vending machine and buy a can of pop with a cell phone text message.
Mobile365 has a data center in Chicago handling these cash transactions for a variety of wireless carriers.
This technology is currently used in Asian countries like the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.
"The reason they use cell phones so much more is the PC penetration is much lower than the cell phone penetration," Tam explained.
"In some countries, cell phone penetration is more than 100 percent, meaning people are using more than one phone.
They have the same phone number, but they're using different phones for different purposes--like fashion accessories."
Tam expects it will take a couple of years for this kind of pay-by-text to hit the U.S.
"Most [companies] will have fraud protection in place," said Tam.
Spending limits can be implemented, and many carriers in Europe and Asia "monitor high use."
In fact, "some carriers have banking licenses so they can provide these protection services in a credit card-type manner."
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