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| Kick the SMS Habit This Summer, Urges Palringo As Europe's mobile firms hit the EU's deadline yesterday to cut the cost of sending an SMS from abroad, mobile instant messaging company Palringo has urged people to kick the texting habit and move on to more flexible, more natural and cheaper ways to stay in touch while abroad. "There are simply smarter alternatives", argues 23 year old Martin Rosinski, Palringo's founder and chief technology officer. "Instant messaging (IM) on mobiles offers vocal instant messaging, picture messaging and text-based messaging, making it a better option, and does so at a fraction of the price of texting – making it an even smarter option." "And many millions of people in the UK already use instant messaging on their home or work computer", he said. Rosinski cites simple facts to back up his point. Using Vodafone UK, sending and receiving data costs up to £5 per megabyte (MB) of data while travelling in the EU. One megabyte is sufficient for Palringo to send and receive: - around 100,000 words by text-based message. This approximates to roughly 4,500 SMS messages and means that, using Palringo, it costs about 0.11 pence to send the equivalent of an SMS message (at £5 per MB). - up to 15 minutes of vocal instant messages. This is equivalent to about 33 pence per minute (at £5 per MB) - but means a personal, vocal instant message can be sent for just 5 pence. - about 32 picture messages using a typical cameraphone - i.e., just under 16 pence per picture (at £5 per MB). By way of comparison, Vodafone UK's standard charges to a customer using their phone within the EU are: - 25 pence per text message; - 38 pence per minute to make a phone call and 19 pence per minute to receive a call; - 36 pence per MMS (picture) message plus the data charges. "So why stick to ordinary text messages?" asks Rosinski? "IM is a better way of messaging and it's better value. You can indulge yourself and your friends in the luxury of a sending and receiving picture messages or vocal instant messages, for less, even when you're abroad." Anyone using social networking sites such Facebook, MySpace or Bebo probably uses instant messaging. There are one and a half billion instant messaging accounts worldwide, almost 1 in 4 of the world's population. Popular services include Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger, AOL's Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. So while instant messaging isn't itself new any more, what is new is that people can do it on their mobile phones - meaning they can, for example, keep down the costs of using their phone while on holiday in Spain, Greece or France – or even the USA - this summer. Mobile instant messaging service Palringo works on almost all models of mobile phone sold in the last two years. Palringo is free, and is easy to download and install from www.palringo.com. There are no hidden costs, catches or other charges. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |