TORONTO-Canadian and U.S. wireless carriers are planning soon to offer text messaging services across all their networks.
Since April, Canadian cell-phone subscribers have been able to send text messages to users on any of the four national networks, after Bell Mobility, Microcell, Rogers AT&T Wireless and Telus Mobility agreed to an intercarrier agreement. But subscribers still cannot send text messages to users on U.S. networks or vice versa because of incompatibility issues.
But the four Canadian and six U.S. carriers have been testing compatibility for about a month, according to David Neale, a vice president at Rogers AT&T Wireless. He declined to say when a North American text messaging service will be offered.
It has been five months since Canada’s four wireless carriers hired CMG Wireless Data Solutions to route text messages on behalf of all the networks.
Text messaging has been slow to catch on in North America because of compatibility issues. Short message service (SMS) on average accounts for 16 percent of overall revenue for European carriers. In Canada, SMS is less than 2 percent of the C$6.5 billion (US$4.11 billion) to C$6.8 billion (US$4.3 billion) that is expected to be generated this year, according to IDC Canada.
