IM On Mobile Phones

Dr Occult writes "Some of the biggest mobile phone networks have joined forces to push instant messaging (IM) over mobiles.Fifteen operators, including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and China Mobile have agreed to work together to make it easy to IM across networks. Third-generation mobile networks can carry more data and move it around far faster so messages really can be instant.This is important because IM conversations typically involve more back and forth than text message chats and it ensures that the experience is similar to that enjoyed online. Under the initiative, the 15 operators covering 700 million mobile phone users have agreed to use a single standard for IM, which would work across networks.The operators are looking to launch instant messaging mobile services later this year."

Comments

That's great!

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing for idiots to use their cell phones for while driving instead of watching where their going....

Do we REALLY need more stuff on our cell phones?

I mean, isn't an mp3 player, camera, games, calendar book, internet access, email access enough?

Re:That's great!

[TedCheshireAcad]

Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it will cost 10c/message or 500 messages for $40/mo or something absurd like that. Either way, they will find some way to make your bill go up 15% if you even think about using the service.

Re:That's great!

[Golias]

Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it will cost 10c/message or 500 messages for $40/mo or something absurd like that. Either way, they will find some way to make your bill go up 15% if you even think about using the service.

The sad thing is, I can talk more-or-less for free, because I never quite use up my minutes, but I get charged every time I send or receive a text message. So, the service which costs them more to provide costs me less. It's exactly backwards, yet in the world of "a la carte" services on mobile networks, it somehow makes sense.

Some day, some cell phone company is going to come up with a business model which quits treating every new data format as a network "feature" that adds cost to the plan and treats bandwidth as bandwidth. No, downloading a picture does not cost more than talking on the phone for three seconds. IM costs almost nothing. Thirty or forty bucks a month should cover the cost of damn near anything normal users do.

On that day, a lot of people will immediately drop their current plan (even if it means paying contract termination penalties to do it) and switch. I'll be first in line.

Point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or is there not really that much point to this (unless you're deaf)? After all, the point of a text is that you can send it when you're not in a position to get involved in a lengthy conversation, just need a quick snippet of information, or just to send "pub, 8pm". But with IM, you're effectively just having a conversation.... why not just talk? Surely it's easier and more effective than typing like mad at keys that are hardly designed for the purpose?

Re:Point?

[TedCheshireAcad]

Think about it - if you had Google talk on your phone, not only could you IM people, but you could use Google's voice chat feature to actually speak to them!

IM is Overrated

[eno2001]

As much as the trendoids out there may feel that they are the "digerati" since they use all the latest buzzy technologies, it all comes down to one thing: two tin cans and a string. When it comes to communication, people only fall into one of two camps especially when they are young:

1. You and your best friend rigged up some kind of comm system between your houses because you were actual real live techno geeks.

or...

2. You were a catty, snippy teen who passed around "he said/she said" notes in school all day and that's about the extent of what communication means to you.

Now obviously there's a right way and a wrong way to look at communication. The right way is to ogle the technology itself and try to learn how it works so you can do more interesting things with it. The wrong way is to use it to pass around "he said/she said" information (ie. what most morons consider communication to be). Personally, I think IM is overrated because there are very few IM systems that you can actually force into serving you properly. My preference is Jabber because I can actually run my own IM server for private use among friends and family. I can also do very interesting things with it, like trigger events remotely by sending commands to a "bot" account. I've got one at home on my Jabber server that I call "Bash Boy". All I have to do is send IM messages to it like:

cd /
ls
mv file1 /home/mystuff

and it obeys. I challenge you to do that with the proprietary IM that other companies offer. If your IM can't do that, then you're not really using IM to it's fullest capabilities. And that's a VERY basic example. Now adding this IM feature to cell phones is ridiculous. Think about all the fat, lazy white trash you see walking around with a cell phone grafted to their ears in the grocery store. You know why they won't use IM? Because they can barely read let alone spell. Can you imagine what sort of horrors they will be "typing" via their IM???

SnuffyBear25: "i heart u babay"
MotorMan: "yeh"
SnuffyBear25: "whatchu doin"?
MotorMan: "yeh"
SnuffyBear25: "do u no how much i heart u"?
MotorMan: "how much"?
SnuffyBear25: "i heart you bigger than peter north's pole"
MotorMan: "damn baby. git on over here. i got a 40 and we can party"
SnuffyBear25: "i b there in a flash 4 u babay. hugs".

Do we really want to promote this kind of sick behavior? If anything we should be building re-education centers to clean this kind of thing up. Who's with me!