Happy birthday SMS

The Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), the principal application behind text messaging, celebrated its 15-year anniversary on 23 July, according to Mobile Messaging 2.0.

SMSC was brought to market in 1992 by Acision and was first signed with Telenor.

According to an article on Cellular-News, Acision evolved the SMSC infrastructure from a basic 'SMSC box' to a complete next-generation, IP-based SMS architecture, centred on Acision's IP SMSC. This enables text management, a range of differentiating service scenarios and a single rack capacity of 16 000 messages per second that can grow to virtually unlimited levels.

New York senator Carl Marcellino is pushing to have SMS text messages banned while driving, following in the footsteps of Washington State, reports Intomobile.

The move follows the recent deaths of five kids in texting-while-driving-related accidents.

"Talking on cellphones isn't the only distraction that causes distracted driving. The explosion of text messaging has created a new problem," said Marcellino.

Mobile media company GoIP has announced that over 20 Fortune 500 companies are now testing www.goipinform.com, GoIP Global's newly launched text messaging notification platform, reports Earthtimes.org.

More than half of the nation's 230 million cellphone users are involved in text messaging, making the cellphone a major new marketing media for corporate brand-building campaigns, as well as a rapidly growing tool to drive consumers to company Web sites.

"Mobile marketing is an emerging business function," said Ike Sutton, CEO of GoIP Global.

In a deployment of population-wide mobile healthcare services, iPLATO has signed up 26 doctors' surgeries in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to its iPLATO patient care messaging service, says BJHC & IM.

As a result, over 165 000 patients will be able to interact with their doctors on diverse health-related subjects such as appointments, periodic reviews, smoking status, immunisation and invitations to specialist clinics directly via mobile text messaging.

One Fulham GP who signed up for patient care messaging said: "In our area, the majority of people have mobile phones, and unlike an answer machine at home or work, a text message to a personal mobile will get the correct person and with privacy."