Text messages a hit with young people

By CHRIS DANIELS consumer reporter

Like many crazes it started among Japanese teenagers.

Text messaging has also astounded phone companies, who never thought such a limited and fiddly method of communicating would take off like a rocket.

Every day, at 20c a pop, between 500,000 and one million text messages are sent and received on New Zealand cellphones.

The growth of SMS or short message service, more popularly known as text messaging, has caused the telecommunications industry to think twice about how people like to communicate.

An Economist story on the growth of text messaging said it marked an unexpected rebirth of shortened forms of written language, a linguistic style once thought to have died along with the telegram.

Messages such as "RU GOING 2NITE?" fly across the ether, to be answered by abbreviations like "YNOT?"

SMS has also proved a godsend for those who are a bit shy when it comes to communicating with potential love interests.

One sensitive man told the Herald he preferred text messaging when communicating with women, as it was better than "sounding like a doofus."

During free text-messaging promotions this year the Vodafone network logged up to 2 million messages a day.

The international GSM association says that, worldwide, 9 billion were sent in August. It is now predicting that the level of 15 billion text messages a month will be reached by December, instead of the 10 billion level it previously thought likely.

Tracy Rasmussen, aged 20, who is studying for her bachelor of visual arts at AUT, has spent the past few months using text messaging as an art form.

She collected all the text messages sent and received via her cellphone over the past three months. She put these together to form a diary, and has printed a T-shirt. She is also putting sample text messages onto parked cars, using magnetised foam letters.

She is part of the young, mobile horde of New Zealand text message users.

"It's easier if you're out somewhere, like in a club and can't hear the phone.

"You can just leave a message and they can look at it whenever they want."

Telecom's market development manager, Nick Holdgate, said the explosion of SMS took the industry by surprise. The feature had been available for years, but was not embraced until fairly recently.

He said a combination of financial and cultural influences had created the demand for the service.

"It fits well with how some people want to communicate.

"Price has really driven it. That is why the youth have really embraced it."

Control was given to the person who received the message, rather than with a voice call, he said.

"You've got the option of whether you reply immediately or take your time."

Using phones in lectures, on the bus or in noisy places was an option that young people in particular wanted, he said.

Telecom introduced the SMS technology on a limited basis this year, but 80 per cent of the cellphones sold for its network had an SMS function.

The market was dominated by Vodafone, but Telecom believed that within a few months it could have just as many of its customers text messaging.

Vodafone customers could not send or receive a text message from anyone on the Telecom network, but once enough digital phones were being used on both networks, Mr Holdgate believed messages would be able to be sent between the two systems.

Vodafone New Zealand managing director John Rohan said talks with Telecom over allowing text messaging between the networks were already under way.

Despite the impending arrival of full internet access on mobile phones, both phone companies agree that text messaging is here to stay.