A friend told me last night that you don’t have Simple Messaging Services available on your mobile phones. So my question is simply this. Was he telling the truth?
And if you don’t have this facility , why not? I suspect it might be a commercial thing, after texting became popular in this country the average mobile phone bill went down…
He also said your still using analogue phones?
If these things are true, any ideas why you are so far behind the UK in terms of mobile communications?
I think we have SMS and we don’t use it. We’ve also had digital phones for a while (I’m remembering commercials for Sprint: “All Digital PCS” something something from a few years ago).
I use text messaging all the time. My phone is also digital, so, I don’t know where your friend got his information, but I think he was mistaken.
I have it, and I use SMSes all the time. Most of my friends seem to use it fairly regularly, too. Although it’s perhaps not quite as popular as it is in Europe, I would hardly call it “unused.”
But the observation that US mobile technology is behind the UK and the rest of Europe is fairly accurate, although the gap has narrowed considerably over the last few years. I couldn’t believe how pervasive cell phone culture was in Europe when I moved there in 1998. I mean, I lived in Budapest, by far not the wealthiest city in Europe, but there were far more cell phones penetration there than my hometown, Chicago.
I think part of the reason for the apparent technological gap may be that there was less existing infrastructure to replace or update. There was one analog frequency in Budapest (450 MHz), but by '98, pretty much everyone (I’d say 95%)was on 900 or 1800 GSM. Contrast that with the US, where still plenty carriers were analog at that time.
I have an At&T phone and I text all the time. I use it to text with friends and relatives in the Philippines also.
I don’t understand why people in the U.S. don’t text more. I find it funny to see people talking on phones all the time.
Thanks for all the replies.
Perhaps the lesser use is a pricing issue? How are your contracts structured?
Text-messaging on wireless telephones is still regarded in the U.S. as an idiotic diversion for children. People with business to do talk on the phone.
Interesting… :dubious:
Texting, and mobile/cell phones as a whole, has been hindered in the USA by two factors:
Compare the figures; SMS text messages in Europe in 2002: 186 billion. USA: 2.4 billion.
Read this for a fuller discussion.
You guys have it easy over there. If you want to upgrade the cellular system all across the entire country, you only have to replace about 6 towers…
One advantage of texting is that you don’t have to disturb the recipient or the people around you. And sometimes you don’t feel like having an actual conversation, with all the attendant small talk and pleasantries, just to convey a simple piece of information.
Another point of view I have seen is that the US allowed a dominant system to emerge by open competition, rather than government decree, and arguably ended up with a better system in the end, CDMA.
Actually, the USA has several systems in use simultaneously. CDMA is by no means universal here.
SMS in the US is available on just about all digital services. But it’s balkanized, so a person with, say, an AT&T SMS phone cannot necessarily contact a Nextel or Sprint subscriber by SMS. Much like email before the internet took off.
It’s geting better, as carriers are realizing that gaateways to other carrier’s syustems are moneymakers as SMS volume takes off.
My phone has it, but I don’t use it. It looks to me a lot like IM: a great way to spend 5 minutes laboriously conveyeing 1 sentence worth of information.
I’ve got a phone with a full qwerty keyboard just so I can send text messages faster. Also helps with the phone’s various internet-related features.
I just bought my first cell phone with the AT&T Free2Go pre-paid plan.[sup]§[/sup] The plan includes SMS messages and they’re free, i.e., they aren’t charged against your air time. They’re limited to 100 characters. If this inexpensive pre-paid plan has them, I’d be surprised if a plan didn’t have them.
§ Yes, I know I’m one of the last people in the US to buy a cell phone and I got the pre-paid plan because I’m cheap. Sue me. 
It takes forever to type out much of a message on my cell phone. I could see using it when I was somewhere I couldn’t talk, but in place of making a call… why?
I said ‘dominant’, not ‘universal’. CDMA still rules in the USA.
I agree. I don’t have text messaging, because I would never ever use it. I already pay an extra $10 a month for a megabyte of wireless internet access, and I don’t think I’ve ever used more than 500 kilobytes. The one time I tried to type out a lenghty message on my phone was when I was composing an email to my grandmother while I was traveling and responding to an email she had sent me. A short email, which would have taken all of one minute at my computer, must have taken 10 or 15 minutes to compose.
Everyone here (UK) is text message mad; I despise texting; there are a couple of reasons for this, firstly, pecking out the messages (even with predictive entry) is irritating in the same way as pushing needles into your eyes, secondly, text abbrviation is the language of drooling morons, but mostly, I despise them because of this:
<Friend>: hi, r u going out l8r 2nite
<Mangetout>: i don’t know, where are you planning to go?
<F>: c a movie may b or cud go 4 pizza
<M>: OK, pizza sounds nice, what time and where?
<F>: dunno r u sure u dont want 2 go 2 movie
<M>: OK then, which one?
<F>: dunno hav u seen potc
<M>: Pirates of the Carribean sounds good, yes, I’m up for that
<F>: no th passion not pirate
(At which point, Mangetout, having spent half an hour and 40 pence, phones the friend to carry out the 30 second phone call (costing 5 pence) that could have saved all this time and money in the first place, or Mangetout simply ignores any further messages and sulks)
Well, the analog system still exists, and analog phones still work, but you can’t go to a store and sign up for an analog plan or buy an analog-only phone.
There are some rural areas where someone might only get analog service, but that’s usually because the only digital service is incompatible with his phone, not because there’s no digital service at all. TDMA and CDMA are incompatible digital systems, but they’re both backwards compatible with analog (AMPS), so if you take a tri-mode CDMA phone into an area where the only coverage is TDMA, you’ll still be able to use the phone in analog mode.
GSM is not backwards compatible with AMPS, which helps explain why GSM hasn’t really taken off here. If you take a GSM phone into an area where there’s only TDMA or CDMA service, you won’t get any signal at all. (That’s not always true - GAIT phones can use GSM, TDMA, and analog.)
It is definitely the dominant system. It’s used by Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, U.S. Cellular, and a couple others.
IIRC Verizon is currently the largest carrier, followed by Sprint, but Cingular (which uses TDMA and GSM) will be the largest once their acquisition of AT&T Wireless is complete.
My impression is that the U.S. carriers are pretty much all SMS-compatible now. The situation is still as you describe it for sending international SMS, though.
Also, I’m not sure how accurate this is, but I’ve heard that US carriers are ahead of European carriers in one area: email to SMS gateways. Most (if not all) wireless carriers here have email addresses you can use to send SMS to phones, which is useful for getting notifications from eBay, for example.