SMS reforms begin from Romania

Romania is one of the three markets where the mobile telephony operators Orange and Vodafone will premiere an online messaging service available for mobile phones, which they say is “the next generation of SMS.”

The announcement came on Monday from the chief executive of the Orange group, Sanjiv Ahuja during the first day of the world”s largest mobile telephony event, the 3GSM Congress, organised in Barcelona.

“The service is already being tested in France, where it has attracted some 100,000 users in a matter of months and will be launched commercially on the markets of the United Kingdom, Romania and the Netherlands in the following months,” Ahuja said.

The service is part of a global agreement between Orange and its rival operator Vodafone, which was announced in the first day of the congress in Barcelona. Under the agreement, the two companies set out to provide their own users with the possibility to communicate with their friends online through text messages sent via mobile phones, based on the model of Internet applications such as Yahoo Messenger or Microsoft MSN.

Orange and Vodafone subscribers in Romania will be able to use this service together, to keep in touch by online messaging via mobile phones, Arun Sarin, Vodafone chief executive told ZIARUL FINANCIAR. “The billing system is completely transparent, as only the messages sent will be paid for, not those received.” The officials of the two companies did not provide any details about a possible rate for the new service.

The partnership between Orange and Vodafone will be eventually expanded so as to become available without restrictions across all the mobile networks of 15 mobile telephony operators, Orange, Vodafone, China Mobile, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia Mobile, T-Mobile, Turkcell and seven operators on the Indian market.

This service offers an improved version of the SMS, since it will allow users to see the entire conversations on the phone”s screen, not just what they are typing at a specific moment, as in the case of SMSs, Sarin explained.

mihai.musatoiu@zf.ro