Next gen 101

A quick geography lesson is now in order for all wireless carriers that plan to roll out 3G service, or virtually any service that does not involve one person speaking with another over a traditional handset.

Europe is a densely populated continent, which traditionally have been slightly behind the U.S. in terms of offering its citizens low-cost wired voice services. Asia, the world’s largest inland mass, also is generally densely populated and has a population showing a willingness to leap frog generations of technology.

North America, by contrast, is populated by a citizenry that generally doesn’t take public transportation to work, has grown accustomed to cheap voice services and hasn’t shown a willingness to jump on many technology bandwagons.

In a recent national survey of tech-savvy consumers, women emerged as a driving force behind the growing popularity of two-way wireless short text messaging service. Eighty-seven percent of 30-40 year-old women surveyed in the study, commissioned by Verizon Wireless, said that text messaging would help them improve their personal and business communications.

Short messaging service, or SMS, allows customers to send messages of up to 160 characters from one two-way messaging capable wireless phone to another, or to any Internet e-mail address. It's a super-fast, discreet way to communicate that has had extraordinary success in Europe and Asia. The service is just beginning to catch on in the United States, where industry analysts estimate wireless messaging users will grow from 1.4 million last year to 15 million by 2004.