I live in Canada and I have a Nokia 6100 series Fido phone (Microcell). For 2$ a month, on any of their monthly airtime packages, you can get unlimited text messaging which allows you to send as many messages, up to 160 chars each, to other fido users. Beyond that, anyone with a fido phone can receive text messages for free and anyone can send a user a message from the fido website (http://www.fido.ca). Yay, portable Icq.
I know at least 15 people who have these phones and most have text messaging. This is great 90% of the time, but sometimes messaging gets overused/mis-used. I notice people getting so caught up in the novelty of sending text messages, that they will waste vast amounts of time trying to get lots said by typing on their little nokia 5190/6190 phones' 9 digit keypads when they could just take 10 seconds call each other be done with it. I've ended a few rather extended exchanges by simply calling the person. These little gadgets can turn in to quite the timewasters, and, just like on many other text-based mediums, the chance of being misunderstood runs pretty high, especially when you're trying to limit yourself to 160 chars.
On the other hand, I have gotten extremely efficient at using my little phone, and I find the discreetness of text messaging rather appealing for times such as when I'm at work. Hehe, leave it on silent and you can send and receive sexy little messages without anyone knowing or making your boyfriend blush.
I even have some friends who have written scripts to get around the 160 char. limit. Just log in to their site, tap away at a message any length you like, and their script will break it up into ~160 char. chunks and send it to the phone for you.
Anyway, this might have been a little long winded, but I hadn't heard anyone mention text messaging in Canada, and I can say that it's getting pretty popular.
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I live in Canada and I have a Nokia 6100 series Fido phone (Microcell). For 2$ a month, on any of their monthly airtime packages, you can get unlimited text messaging which allows you to send as many messages, up to 160 chars each, to other fido users. Beyond that, anyone with a fido phone can receive text messages for free and anyone can send a user a message from the fido website (http://www.fido.ca). Yay, portable Icq.
I know at least 15 people who have these phones and most have text messaging. This is great 90% of the time, but sometimes messaging gets overused/mis-used. I notice people getting so caught up in the novelty of sending text messages, that they will waste vast amounts of time trying to get lots said by typing on their little nokia 5190/6190 phones' 9 digit keypads when they could just take 10 seconds call each other be done with it. I've ended a few rather extended exchanges by simply calling the person. These little gadgets can turn in to quite the timewasters, and, just like on many other text-based mediums, the chance of being misunderstood runs pretty high, especially when you're trying to limit yourself to 160 chars.
On the other hand, I have gotten extremely efficient at using my little phone, and I find the discreetness of text messaging rather appealing for times such as when I'm at work. Hehe, leave it on silent and you can send and receive sexy little messages without anyone knowing or making your boyfriend blush.
I even have some friends who have written scripts to get around the 160 char. limit. Just log in to their site, tap away at a message any length you like, and their script will break it up into ~160 char. chunks and send it to the phone for you.
Anyway, this might have been a little long winded, but I hadn't heard anyone mention text messaging in Canada, and I can say that it's getting pretty popular.
But I'm biased, my friends are all geeks!