New York: Americans are saying CUL8TR to text messaging, a wireless industry group says, as Internet-based applications such as Apple's Messages are starting to take over from what was once a cash cow for phone companies.
CTIA - The Wireless Association said Thursday that Americans sent 2.2 trillion text messages last year, down 5 per cent from 2011. That's still 19 text messages per person per day.
Text messages vaulted into the US mainstream in 2007, despite often costing 10 cents each. Costs came down quickly as phone companies started selling monthly "bundles" of texts. Now, many phone companies give text messaging away for free as part of a plan that mainly meters the amount of data used. That has helped stave off mass migration to Internet chat applications and Facebook messaging in the US, making the decline somewhat surprising, said Pamela Clark-Dickson, an analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media in Britain.
In countries where phone companies have kept the cost of text messaging high, the use of chat applications that avoid those fees has exploded. Those apps include WhatsApp and allow people to text other users of the same service for free, using the Internet and bypassing the phone companies' text systems. Informa estimates that the number of messages sent through such services worldwide exceeded those sent by text last year....
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12:45 PM, May 03, 2013
New Delhi: Bharti SoftBank's free mobile messaging app 'hike', which was launched globally in December 2012, has crossed 5 million subscribers. "The free mobile messaging app 'hike' from Bharti SoftBank (BSB), has crossed the 5 million active subscribers mark in just four months after its launch. This makes 'hike' one of the fastest growing free mobile apps globally," the company said in a statement. Bharti SoftBank (BSB) is a joint...
12:23 AM, Apr 22, 2013
Toronto: Teens who are hooked on to texting are more likely to be shallow, placing more importance on wealth and image than moral, aesthetic and spiritual goals, a new study has claimed. Researchers from the University of Winnipeg in Canada found that teens who texted more than 100 times a day were 30 per cent less likely to feel strongly that leading an ethical, principled life was important to them,...
04:14 PM, Apr 14, 2013
Amid growing incidents of crimes against women, an emergency alert service helpline number 55100 was launched on Thursday in Delhi to facilitate sending of alerts to family and friends of a caller, a service provider said. ...
06:19 AM, Mar 08, 2013
Telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has floated a consultation paper to bring down the rates of mobile calls and SMSes that are currently charged from a customer on availing roaming facility. Among various options to reduce or remove additional cost burden on roaming customers, TRAI has proposed a new norm -- Home Price Rule -- wherein a mobile subscriber should be charged the same amount that he...
06:52 PM, Feb 26, 2013
In another technological leap forward from the 2009 general elections when it had launched the COMET online monitoring system, the Election Commission of India now hopes to supervise the 2014 national elections - the largest democratic exercise in the world - with a coded SMS-based alert system. ...
12:54 AM, Jan 07, 2013
Beijing: More than 600 parents in China's eastern Zhejiang province were shocked and furious to receive a text message from their children's school calling pupils "a piece of s**t." Xin Ou primary school sent out a mass text message to Wenzhou parents on Tuesday that said "this student is basically a stupid piece of s**t, how was s/he ever born?" Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted local Chinese media...
10:54 PM, Dec 21, 2012
The 'OK OK' fame Rajesh is gonna be back again with his another hilarious tale. Rajesh who also has directed hit flicks like 'SMS' and 'Boss Engira Baskaran' is now seemed to have taken up the responsibility of writing the dialogues for the film that is going to be directed by his former associate Ponram, starring Siva Karthikeyan in the lead. The untitled film which is gonna be produced by...
11:01 AM, Dec 20, 2012
"As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author George Frederick Will once said. As the short messaging service, or SMS turns 20, it has swept aside in two decades known conventions about courtesy, relationship, language and communication. It troubles linguists that SMS has made deep inroads in language and unfastened from the root the basics on which any language stands. Take...
09:06 AM, Dec 04, 2012
New Delhi: "Merry Christmas" said the first SMS that was sent out 20 years ago. Two decades and trillions of SMSs later, fewer people will wish their family and friends "Merry Christmas" via an SMS compared to the year before. The humble 160-character Short Message Service may have been revolutionary, but like many revolutions this too is in the process of being overtaken along the evolutionary path and the SMS...
03:09 PM, Dec 03, 2012
New Delhi: SMS (Short Message Service), that is now used more frequently than voice calling on mobile phones completes two decades of its existence on December 3. Today more than two lakh SMSs are sent every second, but this 160-character craze began when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old British engineer, sent the first text message via Vodafone's UK network to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone. The message said, "Merry Chistmas." There...
07:14 AM, Dec 03, 2012
London: OMG! The humble text message, which celebrates its 21st birthday, is past its prime for the first time in history, as new figures show a declining trend of SMSing. After having done everything from sealing multi-national deals to shattering lovelorn hearts during the last two decades, text messaging volumes have declined for the first time since their inception, a new report has found. From a tiny start with the...
04:06 PM, Dec 02, 2012
New Delhi: TDSAT directed Aircel to pay SMS termination fee of 5 paise per message to Vodafone till the dispute is finally resolved by the tribunal. Vodafone has also been directed to immediately restore its interconnection of SMSes generated on Aircel's network. Passing an interim order, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) asked Aircel to pay 5 paise, half of Vodafone's demand of 10 paise per SMS as...
11:07 AM, Nov 24, 2012
New Delhi: To stop the menace of pesky messages, telecom regulator Trai on Monday said only 100 SMSes in a day per SIM card will be allowed at concessional rates. For every SMS beyond the cap of 100 SMSes, a charge of minimum 50 paise will be applicable, the regulator said. Subscribers have been facing the menace of receiving unsolicited promotional SMSes from unregistered tele-marketers who often take the advantage...
06:58 PM, Nov 05, 2012
London: A 41-year-old woman school teacher in Britain has been banned from teaching for two years after she sent over 600 text messages to a pupil, where she told him she will love him forever and that she wanted to give him a hug and a kiss. Teresa McKenzie, a mother of two, was found guilty by a professional panel of unacceptable conduct with the then 16-year-old student, The Sun...
06:43 PM, Oct 12, 2012
New Delhi: Google has extended its free SMS chat service to Indian users. The Gmail SMS feature is now accessible to Indian users along with 51 other countries in Asia, Africa and North America. Google had first made this feature available to its users in some African countries in 2011. Using the free Gmail SMS service users can send text messages to mobile phones via Gmail Chat. Responses to the...
06:57 AM, Oct 11, 2012
Kolkata: In a unique way of one-to-one interaction with industrialists to woo them, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday urged them to feel free to send her an SMS to apprise her of any problems they face on projects. "If you have any problem, you can send me an SMS. There will be no problem," Banerjee told industrialists while addressing a gathering at Haldia in East Midnapore district....
12:57 AM, Oct 10, 2012
It is being reported that Escape Artistes Motion Pictures, the ones behind pictures like 'Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya' and 'Raattinam' are looking for new projects to take over. The team recently bought the remake rights of two films to be made in Tamil. One of them is a Bengali horror-comedy titled 'Bhooter Bhabishyat' which will present a Chandramukhi like entertainer to Tamil Cinema. It will have the proper ingredients of both...
06:40 PM, Oct 03, 2012
Hyderabad: A decision to ensure safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) is expected to be taken at the ongoing UN convention here on bio-safety. The LMOs are the organisms that have been genetically modified through biotechnology. The sixth meeting of the Conference of Parties (to the Cartagena Protocol on Bio-safety (COP MOP 6)), that began on Monday, is discussing capacity-building, bio-safety clearing-house, socio-economic considerations concerning LMOs...
04:06 PM, Oct 03, 2012
New Delhi: Don't want to be annoyed by unwanted commercial calls and SMSs? Here's all that you should know about Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) new regulations to give your mobile phone a little rest. Under the guidelines issued by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), consumers can choose their preference to receive or not to receive commercial communication from seven pre-defined categories. Commercial communications, other than transactional messages...
02:45 PM, Sep 28, 2012
