EMS standard to increase SMS interoperability

Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens jointly announced plan to use the enhanced messaging service standard (EMS) for their text-based short messaging services (SMS).

The EMS standard, defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), is considered the next step toward full multimedia messaging service.

Nokia has not announced its support of the standard because it says it already has been offering these types of enhancements to SMS for a while, said a spokesman for the company.

The four companies now in support of the standard intend to add the technology to their devices so that operators and content suppliers can provide additional SMS services—such as images, music and animation—across any device. Additional investments in existing infrastructures are expected to be minimal because EMS messages are sent via the same infrastructures as SMS messages.

“We are announcing we will implement the program to ensure interoperability,” said a spokesman for Ericsson. “It will be a huge benefit for customers [because they] will be able to send messages regardless of the terminal. It also could increase the SMS traffic.” Ericsson will implement EMS in several of its models, with the first expected to go to market during the second quarter of this year, the spokesman said.