Telecom Mobile now offers texting to US

Monday, 2 February 2004, 10:12 am
Press Release: Telecom New Zealand

Telecom Mobile today announced it has come to an arrangement with the world’s leading provider of mobile SMS messaging services InphoMatch, to enable Telecom to provide its customers two-way texting to the majority of US mobile networks.

The move will give Telecom 027 customers texting access to around 80 million of the 150 million US cellular users, in a country where text traffic is currently surging at between 7 percent and 10 percent per month.

Sending text messages internationally costs no more than sending them within New Zealand and is included within Telecom's maximum charge for 027 SMS messages of $10 per month.

The majority of US mobile providers use the same CDMA network technology as Telecom. The relationship with InphoMatch will also ensure ease of integration of the world’s two main mobile network technologies, CDMA and GSM, to make widespread global texting a reality.

Telecom Mobile Product Manager Ian MacDonald said the initiative was the first in a number of significant steps in developing Telecom’s global text messaging capability, more of which will be announced shortly. These would be made in conjunction with InphoMatch, which is a world leader in integrating CDMA with GSM for texting.

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