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'Texting' Takes Over The Philippines
Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has an article [Free reg. req.] about how "texting" -- the sending of short text messages via cell phone -- is taking over life in the Phillipines. I mean really taking over. People are texting while they drive, at funerals, instead of conversing over dinner, during tests in school, even to avoid the potential embarassment of asking someone for a date in person. This is an interesting contrast to, say, Finland (home of cellular giants like Nokia), where cell phones are everywhere but people actually use them to talk. The article gives some economic reasons for this difference, and mentions that this may be a good way to start bringing some of the poorer but developed countries into the digital age. Any thoughts from the Slashdot community? Is this a good thing, or is it an unfortunate imposition of the depersonalizing aspects of technology onto an unsuspecting culture?"
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Tomorrow will be our 11th Anniversary.
Its been a great marriage strengthened by life on several continents, twice as many cities, a war, and a handful of other life experiences. I'm more than grateful for the chance to interact with the people behind the dim glow of text, a computer, and a MODEM.
YMMV.
Hey, well here in Britain we have something called "Pay as you talk" no monthly charge, and you pay for mins when you use them, you have money stored on the phone, it works great, I am surprised you don't have it, it really took off here, the only problem is that you now have 6 year olds running around with their own cell phones!!!
Spam in my email account is one thing; I pay for a service and if I request it at the ISP level, I can have bulk mail, mail without the @ in it, IP addresses and email addresses filtered.
This does not happen with cell phones.
Recently I have been recieving text spam on my cell phone! A large portion of this spam is directly related to the use of my phone and long distance (I have recieved exercise and cruise ads too). No matter who I talk to at Cellcom (the provider that I use here in Israel, I cannot get them to stop any of it.
My contract is ending soon.. perhaps it's time to switch companies.
Rami James
Guy with a grudge.
--
rJames.org - illustration
Texting is popular outside of the Philippines. I recently interviewed Akseli Anttila of the Nokia Research Center who describes the booming popularity of texting in Finland, despite fairly high costs. Full interview is at http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/features/antt ila/ .
However, it has gotten to a point where people already have their noses buried into their phones while doing practically everything (including driving for heaven's sake!) They do it in church, in class, and it's not uncommon to see a bunch of young people seated around a table none of them talking, but all of them meditating on their SMS.
Nowadays, when newspapers/magazines run profiles on young people here, when asked about hobbies, one of the first they answer is "text messaging" or "texting". Geez, whatever happened to stamp collecting, reading, music, or computer programming?
When it comes to that, I don't like the implications because it means that even in the presence of something more worthwhile, or even in the presence of friends, you'd rather text away. Rumors spread via irresponsible use of SMS endangered some banks here by causing depositors to withdraw heavily.
Such misuse or use at the cost of everything else is not a good thing.
__________________________________________
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
Actually SMS (text-message) spam was deemed illegal in Finland as soon as it started to appear a few years ago. It remains to be seen what legislators in other countries think of it.
Well, I get /. headlines evey few hours to my cellphone through the text (SMS) system, it is great, now I only check /. when something I want to hear about is on it, which in turn reduces the load on the server, which in turn makes the world a better place :o)
;-)
Same here... only I get these messages within fifteen minutes of the story appearing. Perl is cool
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
...if there were a voice to text interface. I can't imagine how useful this might be when your only choices are typing on a QWERTY the size of your hand, using script recognition, or using symbol recognition.
Pax Digitalia
Texting is quite popular even here in Finland, but it's true what Timothy says, talking is even more popular. My personal cell phone bill consists of about 40% SMS, 40% talking and 20% monthly fees. I don't talk long (one reason is that my cell phone is rather old and has quite a poor battery) but I try to call rather than to text someone if I have something to say. That way I get an instant reply (not everybody hears the SMS beep) and can chat with him/her in real time. Plus, I find it nicer to talk than to punch buttons.
The reason why my SMS fees still comprise 40% of my phone bill is that while I enjoy talking, I don't like to leave a message on an answering machine. I rather say it briefly in a text message. That way the recipient can read it when he/she wants and as many times he/she wants. Plus, many times when they have their answering machine on, they still can recieve SMS messages (in a meeting for instance) and perhaps even reply to them.
And then there are these services. Sonera Zed for instance. Get stock quotes, weather information, cinema info, find the gas station with the lowest fees in town to name but a few. All these cost about twice or thrice the standard SMS fee (which is ~15-20 cents) and thus can easily comprise a large-ish portion of your bill.
Many of the phones sold today have predictive text input and that speeds up typing considerably. On the other hand, it's a pain when your buddy has it and you don't: Once a friend of mine sent me a message to which I was replying when he sent another. I had to abort to see what he wrote and then started typing a reply for both. Third message arrived from the same person. This would have gone forever but he got tired and stopped :)
Then there's this thing about privacy. You can't call your girlfriend from work but who would stop you from texting her. We Finns are quite shy in general and therefore find it easier to text rather than to talk aloud when there are others around. And it's more polite as the Japanese guy earlier pointed out.
actually i was just in the Phillipines last month and i even attended a meeting with Smart Telecom, the people who bring this monstrosity to the masses.
i've seen it, and trust me, it's scary. you see loads of people plugging away at a stupid 9-key cellphone keyboard for hours at a time! not only that, but it's not all nice and menu-driven on a lot of the phones there. some of them need arcane commands that make 1970s mainfraims look user-friendly. they even have options to randomly find other people to chat with, like ICQ.
this is in a country where the majority of people are below the poverty line and most people i saw (at least in Manilla) live in shacks on the side of railroad tracks.
but what's *really* crazy about their cellphones? well there are a variety of companies delivering the service: the two biggies being Globe and Smart. but get this: if you're on a Smart phone, it's damned near impossible to connect a call to a Globe phone (and vice versa). in fact, if you're on a Globe phone it can often be difficult to reach a land-line (as land lines are still mostly owned by Smart).
i visited a handful of telecommunications companies in various countries in SouthEast Asia. The Phillipines are by far the most backwards and strange country, in terms of telecommunications, that i have ever witnessed.
- j
Here is a Time magazine article from a year ago about how most of the world (except the U.S.) use cell phones for buying a soda from vending machines, running a car wash, zapping a digital picture to a friend and video conferencing. From that article as well as others such as this one it looks like the U.S. is lagging behind in technology that is commonplace in almost every other industrialized nation.
Somebody has got to figure out a better way to enter text data on small devices. Preferably one-handed.
Nokia's predictive text entry works very well: basically each numeric key represents three or four letters as normal. You hit a key once for each letter entered, and the phone finds a word from its dictionary which "fits", then you hit the "*" key to cycle through matching words. e.g. type "8436" and "them" shows up. Hit "*" and it changes to "then", "theo", "vien". If the word you want isn't there, you fall back on the old way of entering, wherupon the word is added to your personal dictionary.
--
2 Messages.
U want 2 go 4 pincic @ marina?
Yes. CU there.
Sure people have a tendency to "yak on", but that's more likely to happen in a spoken conversation. You're point about being scared to talk to each other is a valid one though.
On the other hand, the potential for misinterpretation is greatly increased. I mean, it's bad enough on the Internet, but with the limited length of SMS, what seemed clear to you could be at best incomprehensible and at worst offensive.
Actually sending SMS-messages (Short Message Service) is extremely popular at least here in Finland (where the mobile phone density is highest in the world, well over 50%). Admittedly, people also use the phones to talk.:)
In addition to text messages the SMS system can be used to send e.g. email, faxes, pictorial greetings and sounds for the mobile phone, either using GSM phone or web interface.
Scary thought: Morse code would work. You can key one-handed and blind. It's faster than trying to enter text via a numeric pad. It's tough to learn, but it could be the next teen-age craze. Somebody's got to put Morse input in a cell phone.
The cost of communicatig over SMS-messages is not that simple - at current rates here (I live in Finland, BTW) sending an SMS-messages costs about as much as talking for a minute. (0,99 FIM, about $0,17) and even a "simple conversation" requires 2 messages - that's two minutes of talking compared to 320 character of text (one message is 160 characters). On the other hand, SMS-message costs always the same, and voice rates depend very much on who you call and when. (Mobile network vs. fixed network, mobile operator, time of day etc...)
But as previous poster mentioned, this is very common among teens. My brother, who is 17 years uses more money for SMS-messages than he uses for voice-calls and he is quite conservative mobile-phone user.
The other very significant use of SMS-messages are different services - you can get new ringing tones, pictures to your phone (operator and other logos), different news-services, stock-quotes, the showing times of movies in your city, horoscopes, jokes - just about anything you can think of. (The newest "boom" are different dating-services where you can search for a date using your phone) I use the weather-service constantly - I skydive and wind it is important to know what the weather is at the airport (mainly how fast the wind blows) - I don't want to drive 40 minutes just to find out that it is impossible to jump. My mobile phone gives an answer in 10 seconds. These services are still awfully expensive - from FIM 1,99 to FIM 9,90 ($ 0,30 to about $2) - I hope that the upcoming GRPS-networks (promised to arrive early next year) will fix this when the phone is always connected to network and you pay only for transfered data - it makes "push" -services much more usable and hopefully will increase the use of services and bring prices down.
As SMS-messages are usually cheaper than a phone call, it's a way more convenient method of communication than the pay-per-second call.
Additionally it gives one the possibility to talk (err... type) about stuff one's not comfortable about talking face-to-face (err... voice-to-voice). At least in Finland typical SMS-messaging users can be described as teenagers, whom (as we all remember) have needs for this type of communication.
<SARCASM>My point? Just trying to tell everyone that they're following Finland's example - again.</SARCASM>
In Switzerland, where I live, people are getting mad with messages:
my girlfriend sends about 100 a month (3 per days)
I've heard some friends speaking about 200 a month
Swisscom, the leading provider of mobile phone communications in Switzerland are sending 1 million messages each day! ( they have about 500'000 subscribers I think)
Switzerland is known to be one of the countries where text messages are the most used... (the cost of a message equals about 30 seconds of conversation, and swiss people like getting to the point without talking much, and messages are good for this task)
If it keeps catching on, then don't you think that this will be heaven for spammers? Imagine, people using this during church and getting a message about buying holy books
Hey - don't joke. It's already happening here in Australia. I've received a number of pieces of spam from my mobile provider about competitions to win Olympic tickets; there has been serious discussion about using SMS sell "Team X just won the grand final" shirts minutes after the final siren. Take all the people using the mobile cell for the stadium as a mailing list, and boom - instant spam.
It doesn't help that Aussie mobile providers are doing the serious hard sell - one provider is offering all SMS messages for free for a few months, just to get people signed up and hooked...
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
I beg to differ, this is only new for the US, the rest of the world has had GSM and text messaging for quite a while.
True, but that's only because our stupid phone companies can't do anything right. While many other locales had to deal with poor terain for landlines, the US stuck with 'em. Portable phones (and HDTV) are probably the technologies which the US is farthest behind everyone else in.
It's kind of sad in some respects. US trying to play catch up, and ending up going for substandard result, yet having the US public willingly pay for it because they *think* its the best they can get?
Obligatory comparison to Microsoft. Sorry.
you can send SMS messages via the web which is a good thing - no cost involved. the sites i use are http://www.quios.com and http://www.mtnsms.com Happy SMSing people
For me SMS is just a small part of the notification system, but putting together the equipment to pull it off wasn't cheap. The herd are simply latching onto a cheap near-equivalent. And yes, the US is hugely lagging behind on this sort of innovative low-rent use of mobiles - for the rest of the world this is a non-story.
I met my wife on good old IRC. Yesterday was our second anniversary. And she was the THIRD real girlfriend I met in a chatroom (which goes to show that IRC creates relationships that are neither more nor less stable than the much-vaunted Real World - the outside thing, not the TV show).
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Don't be a slave to your phone. Tell her once that you won't be able to reply if you are busy.
And don't [reply].
I live in Manila, and am at the older end of the so-called 'generation text'. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the article, texting has taken off because it's unobtrusive. When you call someone on his cell phone, you worry about interrupting him - with text he can reply at his leisure. Given the number of dead spots around the city, it also makes it much more likely you'll get through. Text is really more instant messaging than chat, because you have to know the number of the person you're exchanging messages with. Filipinos don't care much for anonymous conversation, which brings me to my next point... Another reason for it's popularity is it always makes one feel connected. Pinoys (as we like to call ourselves), more than other cultures I have known, value their friends, and are proud of them. Sending and receiving messages in public is subtle bragging about how many friends you have, although the irony of conversing by SMS when your other friends are in front of you is unfortunately lost on many - hopefully this is just a novelty effect. Another related phenomenon and of interest to /. users is the popularity of prepaid cards, which allow anonymity - all you need to do is buy a new sim card (a chip-based card that slides into your phone), and you've got a new number/identity. Not even the telco, let alone the government, can listen in/track you. Despite costing twice as much as a postpaid line per minute, prepaid makes up at least 75% of all cellphone users, and growing (granted, the difficulty of getting credit for a postpaid line is also a factor). We are very privacy-conscious, perhaps due to abuses dating back to the Spanish, Japanese, and American colonizers, and as recent as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. We resisted a national ID system, rightly fearing that the government would abuse it, and laugh at Singapore, where a passport is needed to buy a sim card. Many people don't have bank accounts because they don't trust the banks. Watching the privacy issue unfold over the Net, I wonder whether our experience might have something to contribute. What we have is essentially a system where your identity is tied to your number, but only those you choose to reveal it to can make the connection. When you tire of your number and all that is associated with it, you simply get a new one, realizing of course you lose the benefits along with the liabilities. It will be an interesting experiment, because it is likely that B2C will happen over the cellular phone here, prepaid cards will be e-cash, and sim cards will be identities.
Everybody.
Many people use them to send email. It's cheaper (connect time is very expensive here), it's asynchronous, and it's more polite, if you happen to be on a crowded train or similar. This despite the fact that typing in Japanese on a cell phone keyboard is a huge pain. Characters are typed using a phonetic alphabet that has over 50 glyphs organized by initial consonant -- all the "k" syllables are on one key, which you press up to 5 times to get the one you want -- and since most Japanese kanji characters need two or three phonetics, plus a menu-based selection in case of homophones (of which there are huge numbers) it can take more than ten keystrokes to enter a single kanji (and many Japanese "words" are combinations of two kanji). All of this done with the thumb of the hand holding the phone.
But people still do it. Abbreviations are very popular in Japan, and you can forego the kanji and just leave it as phonetics if it's clear enough from context.
One nice thing about this is that you don't have to hold the little microwave transmitter next to your head. Similarly for the new cell phones that have video cameras in them -- you hold them in front of you (but you don't type text in that case, obviously).
Meanwhile the cell phone manufacturers are packing more functionality into the phones. My wife's cell phone has a tamagotchi living in it. Plus all the functions of an address book and memo organizer. All on a 3cm screen. But small is beautiful in Japan, and you can pack a lot of info into a small space (16x16 pixels per kanji) even if it takes a long time to type it.
We have SMS in New Zealand and it's okay to a point. There are some people though who I just wish I hadn't given my phone number to.
There's one person in particular who normally is a heck of a nice person, but stuck in a boring receptionist job. A minimum of three times a day I get that annoying beep beep -- beep beep, only to get the same boring "what are u up to?" message. It wouldn't be so bad if she just called and asked, but replying means stopping everything I'm doing to punch in an answer through a stupid 9 key keypad.
This is worse than instant messaging where you can at least pretend to be invisible and if not, there's a decent keyboard. Switching your phone off is possible but then it defies the point of having the phone in the first place.
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Since I am living in Finland I think I can safely comment on this.
Sending SMS messages is incredibly popular in Finland and there are an amazing amount of services available via SMS.
Some numbers:
Over 65% of Finns own a cell phone (population is about 5.5 million)
Last year there were 650 million SMS messages sent
And the speed some of them can type on those phones is pretty amazing too :-)
Also, if I recall correctly, the number of cellphones exceeded the number of fixed lines in Finland last year
Jody
Someone else has probably posted this already but here is the link.
Wonder why they haven't closed off this access point like they did the partners thing... I don't feel like giving my personal information for something which I believe should be free.
Oh please tell me where the other companies beside NOKIA are:). But seriously, texting has become extremely popular here in Finland lately. Especially young people (ie teenagers) use them in incredible amounts.
The possible reasons for this is, besides the veritable plethora of mobile phones around here, the fact that we have lots and lots of services available via texting. Services ranging from weather forecasts to reserving your movie tickets, searching the whitepages or checking stockprices, even chat-rooms and uploadable modifications to your phone (like ringing tunes and operator logos). Shortly put, we have it all.
Personally I don't use any of those services (well ok, I did load a neat logo for my phone), but these services are definetly attracting a lot of revenue for the teleoperators, since the average user of those services doesn't pay his or her own phonebill but lets daddy or mommy take care of it.
The Phillipines version of the "Wassup!?" Budweiser commercials:
...across town another guys cell phone rings. He picks it up to the (text) message "WASSUP!?".
Man stands still for 45 seconds hitting buttons on his cell phone...
-Antipop
And hard. There are times when it is NOT appropriate to be connected to your friends and whatnot. Not only are they doing it while driving, which is IMAO moronic, but they're doing it at funerals, which is disrespectful to everyone. Someone needs to tell these people to throw their phones into the sea and talk to people face to face, because they crossed the line.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Here is what it is like for me in Australia (I am 16). Everyone in school has ICQ (that's ICQ not AIM, we all get ICQ because a friend cons us into it). The advantage of ICQ is that u can talk to serveral ppl at once (although in conversation it is hard to do more than 3-4). OK - Mobile phone messages: Approx. 1/3 Australians have mobiles It is popular among Teenagers to send SMS.. often I get stupid jokes like "r u lonesome 2nite" etc.. Most people have Nokia ph's (or the same screen size), because there seems to be a few rude ascii art pictures going around. I think the ettiquette behind SMS is kinda weird. Since PHs don't have QWERTY keyboards (most atleast - I have a ChatBoard), most messages r short & meaningful. I mean If someone never recieves SMS, then u send something like a Love You message, then it means a lot to someone... Unlike so much with phonecalls, everyone loves recieving SMS (it's the noveltly i guess). That's my story.
It took us 3 years and a big bribe--affectionately referred to as "grease money"--to just get a second phone line installed in our house. And that's not bad from PilTel, whose customer service antics include severing our telephone wires while performing "routine maintenance checks."
There are still many areas where the only way to get messages in and out is via Ham radio operators to a telegraph office. I'm not kidding! So in an area that's beset by typhoons, earthquakes, seasonal floodings and volcanoes, building and maintaining land lines is extremely difficult compared to simply putting up a few wireless towers.
(BTW, the 1 peso fee for texting is about $0.02 at today's exchange rate.)
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
If it keeps catching on, then don't you think that this will be heaven for spammers? Imagine, people using this during church and getting a message about buying holy books. And imagine how many spams they will get. Love technology, though the spammers just love to ruin it. FYI - it's good to see in the phillipines there is no need to socialize with humans anymore.. ::phew:: I thought tv was going to be the reason why no one will socialize anymore
Ben Cathers - president/partner
Ben Cathers - president/partner
phatstart.com built for teens
I go back to the Philippines to visit relatives about once a year; my last visit there spanned a week in late March/early April. I was there for the "Pope is dead" rumour, which thanks to a combination of "texting", word-of-mouth and the strong Catholicism (it was a Spanish colony for 300 years), spread like wildfire. I got to see and experience texting first-hand.
One reason for the high adoption of cell phones is that the wait for a land line is incredibly long. My cousins, who live in a suburb of Manila, were on the installation waiting list for over a year. For many people, the only way to get a phone within a reasonable period of time is to go mobile.
A mobile phone is a very handy thing in the Philippines, especially in extremely crowded cities like Manila, with a population of about 10 million (and a possible 2 or 3 million transients who get missed in the surveys). Traffic is so bad that they had to establish a system in which certain roads are off-limits to cars with odd- or even-numbered license plates at peak times, depending on the day. Running late is a common occurrence, and having a cell phone means that you can reach anyone who's waiting for you or find out how late the person you're waiting for will be.
Texting is much cheaper than using up your air time. There are many popular cell phone plans that offer 100 or 250 free text messages per month. Among the teen- and 20-something crowd, texting is most often used to let your friends know where you are or where to meet up. It proved to be extremely handy in "The Fort" -- a very popular and crowded mall of bars, clubs and restaurants located in an area similar to San Francisco's Presidio (along with the new club, Orange, it's a fun place to hang out...tell 'em I sent you).
There are services already available in the Philippines that we here in North America have yet to see. Some banks in the Philippines offer ATM-like functions over your cell phone -- you can check your bank account or be notified of things like payments due or maturing funds.
(In case you were wondering, the two official languages of the country are Filipino and English. Most of the people in Manila speak workable or better English, and most of the signage in Manila is in English.)
Every shopping center and more than a few street market stalls carry cell phones or cell phone accessories. I'm still kicking myself for not getting the Neon Genesis Evangelion face plate for my Nokia. My cousin has one of the phones with a flash RAM updateable ringer. His current phone ring is Aqua's "Barbie Girl", which somehow appals and amuses me at the same time.
As for the cultural aspects -- there's "hiya" (pronounced "hee-YA"), which can be translated as "shyness", "shame" or perhaps "reserve". It's a traditional Filipino trait not to be too outspoken, but you have to remember that a fair bit of North American culture has seeped in, thanks to a large expatriate community, radio and television. Traditionally, you were introduced to members of the opposite sex at well-chaperoned parties held at someones' parents house (many people still don't leave home until they're married there), but these days meeting people while out is increasingly becoming the norm. The teens and twenty-somethings are caught in the pull between the traditional and newer ways to socialize -- it seems that texting seems to be the best compromise. Perhaps texting might be the future of geek pick-ups at Linux conventions!
Just another "The Thrilla from Manila",
Master of Kode Fu
Not if you've got a newer phone.
Lots of new phones come with predictive text input which lets you press each key just once, and it predicts what word you're typing based on a built in dictionary. Much quicker.
Text-messaging is great: the US is really missing out. I find it indispensible for several reasons. Firstly its great if you're in a noisy bar or club, where its impossible to hear a phone. Secondly its cheap: i pay £.06p ($.09) per message, as opposed to £.30p/min to call another network mobile.
Lastly, and most importantly, texting is great for flirting. Little mesages that you'd never dream of saying by voice, are somehow easier to say by text!
And that is why it is better.
I can leave a message for someone across the office and when they're not busy they check their email and can answer my non time critical question.
It often gets very hectic if there are always several people trying to vie for face time. Email allows for more efficient scheduling.
Also, I don't have a cell phone. I hardly ever give people my phone number if they want to contact me, I give them my email address.
Start Running Better Polls
Think about it, just because the QWERTY standard is familiar (well, it is a standard after all), doesn't mean that it is the best for every circumstance.
I would not mind learning a new typing convention if it's learning curve isn't too steep and if it fits the use.
I keep thinking about the one-handed keyboard. Wouldn't something similar to this be of great use as opposed to a 40 key (absolute minimal punctuation, numbers and letters) pad? Key combination pads are the way that I would like to see miniature communication in the immediate future.
Speech recognition is a long way off in this size that would make a 65,000 word vocab small enough to carry around.
Rami James
Guy with a cellphone.
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rJames.org - illustration