City revokes employees' SMS privileges

New York's Troy city employees had their text messaging privileges revoked this week after message charges totalled more than $1 000 in recent months, according to Troy Record.

Deputy mayor Dan Crawley says text messaging is unnecessary on city-provided cellphones because all city employees who need to be available for immediate contact or e-mail, such as code enforcement officers, community police, emergency personnel, and top-level employees, already have e-mail-capable BlackBerry devices.

"If you can e-mail, you have no reason to text," said Crawley. "Every time an employee sent a text message, it cost the city money, but by removing the ability we've taken that the temptation to use that form of communication away."

Companies can see the benefits surrounding the use of instant messaging (IM), but the vast majority still ban its use within their organisation, says CIO India.

Research released by IM firm ProcessOne shows that 72% of UK businesses have banned the use of public IM software, such as MSN, AIM and Yahoo!, because of security worries.

Yet the Vanson Bourne survey of 100 senior IT decision-makers from enterprises of 1 000 or more employees, also discovered that 74% of respondents think IM could provide valuable collaboration benefits to their organisation.

The 2008 "Big City Wireless Use Study", commissioned by Verizon Wireless, reveals that there is exponential growth in text messaging in North Carolina and across the US's South, states Tradingmarkets.

The study showed an increase in text messaging among the company's North Carolina customers by more than 600% in 24 months (April 2006 to April 2008), making the Tarheel state among the most text-savvy states in the South.

According to the study, Verizon Wireless customers in Charlotte earned the number one spot across the state as the 'textiest city' with customers sending and receiving over 103 million text messages in April of 2008 compared to just 15 million texts sent and received in April of 2006.