|
 Although estimates vary, the number of SMS messages sent each month worldwide has skyrocketed from four billion in May of 2000, to an estimated current monthly rate of about 30 billion. Moreover these figures are projected to grow to 100 billion per month by 2005.
Until now most of the revenues for SMS have gone to the mobile operators, but an announcement earlier this month from New York-based Eatoni Ergonomics has raised speculation about new possibilities in the industry.
Eatoni last week said that it had signed agreements with Siemens, Philips and Panasonic, all of which will use the company's product LetterWise on newly manufactured cordless phones in Europe. Using Letterwise, these firms will now make new phones that will have the capacity to send SMS messages.
The deal could be a profitable one for Eatoni, because it places the company's technology in more than half of the SMS cordless DECT phones on the European market. But the new agreements also show that the European cordless phone makers are gearing up for a wider rollout of SMS-enabled home phones.
Previously, cordless phones using DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephony) that were able to carry SMS had not been available on a widespread basis, because there was no standard technology across the industry.
But the European Telecommunications Standards Institute approved the Low Rate Messaging Service (LRMS) at the end of 2001, which in combination with DECT and SMS gives landline operators the ability to carry text messages.
SMS over cordless phones is already available in Germany and Italy and most other European operators are expected to launch it soon.
With these moves, the line is blurring between mobile phones and cordless home phones which are connected to a fixed line network.
DECT is a kind of cordless phone technology that offers far greater range than traditional analogue cordless phones, around 50 meters, and also suffers from less interference because it allows the handset to work on many more channels. And DECT mobile phone makers, such as Sagem in France, are launching new phones that work on both GSM and DECT, which means that many users might soon have one device for all of their communication needs.
And although Sagem claims to be the first company in Europe to launch this kind of phone, it has been an item of discussion for years. Trials of dual mode systems have been undertaken by the Swedish operator Telia since the late 1990's, and Swisscom and Telstra have also experimented with the idea.
In the UK BT said in 1997 that it was undertaking its 'Onephone' trial in the London area, although this project was later killed.
|
