The New International Mail

Time was, a Verizon Wireless customer in the U.S. couldn't send a text message to a Vodafone subscriber in the U.K. because of the language barrier. Not English (or what passes for English in the slang-heavy lexicon of texting) — the problem was the language barrier between Verizon's CDMA network and Vodafone's GSM system.

But in late 2003, the carriers teamed with intercarrier messaging solutions provider InphoMatch to introduce transatlantic short message service, allowing Verizon customers to transmit text messages to and from Vodafone's subscribers in the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Here's how it works: Say a Verizon subscriber in New York sends a text message to a friend in London. The message is transmitted to InphoMatch over a private IP network and translated from CDMA to GSM using a comprehensive international routing layer. InphoMatch then sends the message to Vodafone's SMS center, which delivers it to the destination subscriber. Reply messages go back to InphoMatch through the same pipes. The entire process happens within seconds.

“Think of us as a clearinghouse for messages between carriers,” said Bill Dudley, senior director of product management for InphoMatch.

In addition to international texting, InphoMatch currently serves 75% of the U.S. intercarrier messaging market, translating 600 million domestic intercarrier text messages in January alone with their InphoXchange service, according to Greg Matranga, the company's director of corporate marketing.

“Text messaging represents about 20% of the European carriers' total revenue share. In the U.S., it represents between 5% and 10%, so this is just creating a new opportunity for subscribers to communicate and utilize their handsets,” Matranga said. “Remember the immigrant makeup of the U.S. — people still want to be able to communicate with the people in their home countries, so this does create another opportunity for U.S. carriers to market to a new segment out there that previously may not have been one of their core targets. It's not huge, but it's definitely an incremental revenue opportunity for U.S. carriers.”

Though the company won't divulge specifics on expected revenue, Vodafone agrees with its market predictions.

“A large number of our customers have friends, relatives and colleagues who work in the U.S., and it's more about rounding the service off, providing them with the ability to contact all their friends and relatives,” said Vodafone Group Communications Manager Janine Young. “With SMS, it's about evolving the service, rather than specifically what the revenues will be for us.”

Dudley says trials are now in progress to test the implementation of interoperable MMS among domestic carriers and between U.S. and international carriers. “I expect you'll see international MMS interoperability by summer if things continue to go as well as they have been in the last month or so,” he said. “The interest is there, and we have the solution. We've proved ourselves in SMS, so there's no reason why we can't do MMS.”