Yahoo adds e-mail-to-mobile SMS to mail service

Yahoo Inc. updated its e-mail service, adding a feature that enables users to send text messages to mobile phones.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company incorporated instant messaging components into its Yahoo Mail service, allowing users to send real-time messages to wireless handsets in the United States, Canada, India and the Philippines via the IM platform. Users can also send instant messages from Yahoo’s e-mail program to Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.
While sending texts from Yahoo Mail to mobile phones is free, mobile users will incur carrier messaging charges for receiving messages and responding via SMS.
“The feature is seamlessly incorporated into the new Yahoo Mail, and is as easy as entering a mobile phone number, typing a text message and hitting send,” the company said in a prepared statement. “People can also easily convert their e-mail messages into IM chats or switch to a text message dialogue with the click of a button, when friends come online or go mobile.”