Abstract
The introduction of the mobile phone revolutionised the way people traditionally communicated with one another. People suddenly became accessible independent of their location, at any time of the day or week. A salesperson in business for instance, who was always on the road could now be reached and could in turn make phone calls conveniently between customer meetings. Bundled with the basic mobile voice service was messaging in the form of voice or text. The latter has especially proven to be a useful and cost-effective method for conveying a short message. Collectively residential and business mobile subscribers use the short message service (SMS) to send millions of text messages per day (each not more than 160 characters in length). Information 'push and pull' services in the form of SMS, such as the latest sports results or betting odds, are now commonplace value-added features offered by second-generation (2G) mobile service providers.
Publication Details
The book chapter was originally published as Michael, K, The rise of the wireless internet, in Lawrence, E et al (eds), Internet Commerce - Digital Models for Business, Wiley, 3rd edition, 2003, 291-296.