GET THE MESSAGE

Colin Matthews looks forward to the day when Americans start making a habit of walking into trees as they type short messages on their mobile phones. It's a phenomenon already occurring in Europe, where carriers reap significant revenues from short message service (SMS).

But “SMS [in the U.S.] is one of those esoteric things at the moment,” said Matthews, president and CEO of InphoMatch.

That is changing rapidly with the help of InphoMatch's InphoXchange platform. The product is an SMS clearinghouse that allows wireless subscribers to send text messages to virtually any other wireless subscriber — regardless of carrier — by knowing the recipient's phone number.

AT&T Wireless turned on nationwide SMS in November using the platform, and the carrier's SMS traffic has exploded by a factor of five, Matthews said. VoiceStream Wireless also recently deployed SMS.

The ability to send SMS messages to every wireless subscriber in the U.S. has been a hindrance to the adoption of the service, which is a big cash cow for European carriers. But U.S. carriers traditionally have kept SMS traffic on their own networks.

“There's a greater universe outside the network,” Matthews said. “Carriers need to find ways to get money from other carriers' subscribers.”

And not coincidentally, InphoMatch has found its own way to make money from carriers' subscribers — the company receives a fraction of a penny for every SMS sent. Given that cross-carrier messaging could produce a $5 billion revenue stream for North American operators by 2004, that's a lot of pennies.
— Lynnette Luna
www.inphomatch.com