Text messaging

Text messaging

Mar 2nd 2006
From The Economist print edition

TELEGRAMS have just passed into history in America, following the announcement by Western Union, once the colossus of the industry, that it was discontinuing its telegram service at the end of January. Yet in a sense, the technology pioneered by Samuel Morse has been reborn with a modern twist, in the form of text messages sent between mobile phones. For years, foreigners have wondered why Americans, usually at the vanguard of technological adoption, were so reluctant to embrace texting. But now they have adopted the technology with enthusiasm. What happened?

America's apathy towards texting was easy to explain. Voice calls on mobile phones are cheaper than in other countries, which gives cost-conscious users less incentive to send texts instead; several different and incompatible wireless technologies are in use, which made sending messages from one network to another unreliable or impossible; and texting was often an additional service that subscribers had to sign up for. As a result, the number of messages sent per subscriber per month was just over seven in December 2002, compared with a global average of around 30. …