You're going to be 20 minutes late for a final review sales meeting. Traffic is slow, but moving, so you don't want to risk sending a text message to your contact and get in an accident. You know she's in a meeting so you don't want to call her cell phone either. What do you do? Until a couple of years ago, you'd have to either call or dial the main number and leave a message with the receptionist. The recent emergence of voice SMS has provided a more palatable alternative. You simply record a message that you'll be late into your cell phone, and press send to deliver that message to your contact. She'll see that she has a message, and will press a button when she's ready to access it.

The producers of 'All My Children' were looking to add an interactive element that would allow fans to contribute to their popular daytime drama. The pioneering integration of premium wireless text messaging with television programming demonstrated the untapped market for premium text-messaging services - 2.5 million text and online votes were cast!

How would you like to ride on the back of a Superbike driven by champion Gary Mason or have the very latest Mitsubishi Evo featured in '2 Fast 2 Furious' sitting in your garage?

Why is a technology that's a way of life in Europe - not to mention profitable and rapidly expanding - so slow to gain acceptance in the U.S.? Certainly the mobile phone users are there. So, it seems, are the wireless opportunities.

Short Message Service (SMS) has been the unpredicted golden goose of mobile telephone networks, with more than a billion messages flying through the airwaves every month over the GSM network alone. Even at a few cents a message it's not difficult to see how SMS might be the solution to the growing debt problem faced by companies that massively overbid for 3G licenses... at least until 3G starts to make some money.

Now that the worst of the U.S. recession appears to be behind us, a majority of SMS (Short Messaging Services) fans and industry analysts agree that 2002 could be a real beginning for SMS in North America.

Though interoperability has come to the North American text messaging market, it is not a panacea. SMS is still held back by the majority of cellphones whose SMS functionality might be described as 'challenged.' Some new, innovative technologies may help the situation.

By using a pay-per-use model, service providers can actually attract subscribers, encourage usage, and realize revenue immediately without substantial overhead. The statistics are staggering - billions of text messages sent every month in Europe alone.