Aug/Sept 2008

Sending text messages could cost you under 10 per cent of the normal price with a new service called FishText launched by CardBoardFish, a text messaging specialist.

The service was launched in late July, and claimed to have picked up more than 100,000 registrations within three weeks. It's free to register, and typical prices for sending messages over the service are said to range from 1p to 5p. Some cost less, and messages to other FishText users are free.

CardBoardFish achieves these savings by using GPRS data networks to handle the communication rather than conventional SMS technology. An advantage of this is that the usual 160-character limit is waived, and instead there is a 459-character limit – nearly three times as much. But the message still arrives on the recipient's phone looking like a normal text, which can be replied to in the normal way.

You can also send messages from a mobile computer – a useful and cost-saving feature, as many Skype users have already discovered with that system.

 

Users have to download a small application program to their mobile handset, but this is said to run on most Java-enabled mobile handsets. A high-end phone is not required.

This is by no means the first low-cost text messaging service, and won't be the last (see FlashTXT story, right), but it seems to be achieving critical mass by its clear-cut proposition and strong marketing initiative, and must throw up new question marks over why conventional texting is still relatively so expensive.