Free SMS chatting for GSM phone users

Free SMS chatting for GSM phone users

By Lim Tri Santosa

BANDUNG (JP): Johny Adrian, an 18-year-old student, taps at
the keypad of his silver-metallic cellular phone as he sits with
friends at a shopping mall, sending text messages to other
friends.

Each day, he says, he pumps out as many as 30 messages,
contributing to massive congestion on Satelindo cellular
networks. In shopping malls or on park benches, groups of friends
often sit in silence, tapping out messages on their cell phone
keypads.

"It's fun," Johny says. "We just talk about stuff. It's like
chatting on the Internet."

Most of the "texters" are teenagers or young professionals,
that is a group labeled "generation TXT", I propose. To save
keystrokes, the texters have developed their own vocabulary,
typing for example "C U L8R" for "See you later".

Melia, a 17-year-old student, said most of her messages are
in English instead of Indonesian.

"It's harder, but it's supposed to be more cool," she said.
The messaging has even spawned its own folklore, with thousands
of jokes able to be told in just two or three brief lines.

Chatting

An emerging application for the Short Message Service is chat.
In the same way as Internet chat groups have proven a very
popular application of the Internet, groups of like-minded
people, so called communities of interest, have begun to use SMS
as a means to chat, communicate and discuss. The amount of
information transferred per message tends to be lower with chat,
where people are more likely to state opinions than factual data.

Over six million people all over the world per day use SMS to
communicate. And this fad is growing! Analysts estimate that
close to 8 billion messages a month are sent using a technology
called Short Messaging System (SMS).

SMS Text Messaging has its own secret, silent language. It can
save time and helps make keying in, sending and receiving
messages more fun than just talking on the phone. It does not
require the real-time availability of two parties. Like e-mail,
SMS is asynchronous, which allows users to respond when it is
convenient.

There are sufficient regular users and awareness of and
momentum behind the services. SMS has become an integral and
important part of many customer's everyday business and personal
lives. The next quantum leap in SMS traffic volumes is caused by
the introduction of SMS for prepayment customers. These customers
pay for their cellular airtime as they go rather than having
contracts. Enabling the prepay customers to send short messages
causes large traffic uplifts because the typical young person who
is the main user of prepaid services is also ready, willing and
able to manipulate the phone keypad and originate short messages.

SMSC

Most network operators around the world recognize the need to
allow customers to send short messages to people on network
operators competing in the same country as them. The addition of
interworking between network operators who are competing in the
same geographical market gives customers of both networks the
opportunity to use SMS in the same way as they do voice. Just as
they can make a voice call to each other's phones, so too can
they send short messages to each other.

Unfortunately, that's not the case with Indonesian GSM network
operators. Technically speaking, network operators are reluctant
to allow their competitors access to their signaling channels,
over which short messages are transmitted. This is because these
channels also handle voice call set up and other mission-critical
tasks. Because SMS is a store and forward service, every single
short message of any type passes through an SMS Center (SMSC =
Message Center Number).

It is not possible to make SMS available without an SMS Center
since all short messages pass through the SMS Center. To release
national SMS interconnects, there are some issues.

From a commercial perspective, network operators competing in
the same country often charge different prices for SMS service
and offer different services. In such cases, knowledgeable users
could benefit from accessing less expensive or more sophisticated
Short Message Services by changing SMS Center addresses or
sending their messages in a different way. A price has to be
agreed upon for such inter-network national messaging to
discourage or prevent such behavior.

Internet SMS

But what else is missing in this service? For one, how nice it
would be if text messaging or SMS would go global without the
high cost that usually comes with international communications.
Well, here is good news for us; and maybe not so good for the
telecommunication giants. Thanks to the geniuses in the Internet,
this service is now available -- for free.

This means that if you have a text-capable cell phone, your
relatives abroad can now send you short text messages, and vice
versa. Log on to the Internet and visit www.quios.com and see for
yourself. This San Francisco-based start-up will surely make
waves. But alas, Quios only gives each registered member a
maximum 10 messages per day. Another site is www.mtnsms.com, very
reliable for Telkomsel subscribers, but also good enough for
Satelindo users. You can send as many messages as you can type.

The disadvantage of Quios and mtnsms service is you have to
log on to their web site first, before you can start sending your
SMS messages. Now, you need not, as a new software called
CellBuddys can bridge those web sites. CellBuddys
(www.cellbuddys.com) is a compact but highly efficient cell phone
messaging application that enables you to send SMS text messages
to cell phones all over the world via Internet.

Easily installed and instantly accessible from your system
tray, this program features a modest-sized interface displaying a
list of your cell "buddys" and a simple menu that lets you add
more "buddys" to your list.

Features include a buddy message history that can be
enabled/disabled and an Update Servers function that enables you
to update/add the latest available plug-in servers. Connecting to
servers such as MTN SMS and Quios, this free text-messaging
program broadens your reach to global proportions.

CellBuddys can only determine if the message was successfully
sent to the server. Sometimes the servers are backlogged and
there may be delays in delivering messages. Usually messages are
sent after a few seconds. If you are sending using the mtnsms
server you can log in to their site and view your "outbox", it
gives you a list of all pending/delivered/failed messages.

Neither Quios nor mtnsms displays your original cell phone
number (CLI= the calling identification number). Hence, the
recipient will not know who is the sender, unless you state your
name in the message. Hold on! There is a new SMS service from
Netherlands called XOIP.com.

XOIP.com is the best, because the CLI displays your original
cell phone number, hence the recipient will know who is the
sender. When you register to XOIP.com, you should fill in your
original cell phone number, this number will be used by XOIP SMSC
as the CLI. For convenient chatting with XOIP, I suggest you
should press Ctrl+N (if you use Microsoft Explorer) to open
several "sms-sending" windows.

It is a good idea to send a test message to your cell phone
first, to know how fast the delivery time is at the present time.
If the message is delivered within a few seconds, then you will
be sure that the foreign SMSC is not in full swing (below normal-
traffic usage), then you are ready to chat with your friends. Do
not try to change the Message Center Number setting on your cell
phone menu, because it will not work! Especially for Telkomsel
users, please do not try to change the setting. Even though you
can send SMS with foreign SMSC, the message will not reach the
recipient and your account will be debited Rp 500 for nothing.

Yes, there are a lot of foreign SMSC numbers, but
unfortunately, we, as the subscribers of Indonesian GSM network
cannot utilize them. I think either foreign GSM network operators
or Indonesian GSM operators have already protected their SMSC
from being used by other networks. Thus, they cannot be accessed
unless they enter into a mutual agreement. That is why you cannot
send SMS in Indonesia to different network operators, unless you
buy a relatively expensive SMS token like smsoke.com or use free
e-mail-sms technique (as mentioned in my previous article:
Sending SMS between Satelindo and Telkomsel, JP, Aug. 21, 2000)
or use the above free sms web service. (abbaml@rad.net.id)