Came across an interesting report from Portio Research which says, mobile phone users sent more than 5 trillion text messages last year, creating a $150 billion market.

RCOM has turned out to be the first operator in the telecom world to unlock a new battle field for SMS space.

Today it made a drastic stir by offering SMS’s more affordable to all mobile customers in India. The plans are open to RCom’s CDMA and GSM subscribers including both for prepaid and postpaid subscribers. Reliance Mobile customers can avail of two revolutionary SMS tariff plans:

• ONE PAISE PER SMS.
• UNLIMITED SMS’s @ Re. 1 PER DAY.

SMS continues to grow every year with more and more innovative ways of utilizing its potential coming in the forefront. Indians are using SMS as a mode of communication to keep in touch with friends and family. With select subscriber groups, SMS is a preferred communication mode over voice calls. On account of significant tariff disparity in the recent months, it has lost its due share of attention.

Like  Simply Reliance offerings of Local, STD and Roaming calls at 50p/min and 1p/sec from any Reliance mobile to any phone on any network, yet to be matched by any competitive offering.  With this best in the industry initiative, RCOM offers significant value not only to the existing 9 Crore CDMA and GSM customers, but are also aimed at gaining new acquisitions from high SMS usage groups of the GSM community such as young professionals and the youth across India.

RCom subscribers irrespective of their current plan can subscribe to the one paisa per SMS plan through a voucher of Rs 11 per month and for the unlimited plan Re.1 will be deducted from their prepaid balance.

The company is also taking measures to ensure that telemarketers and bulk SMS service providers do not misuse these plans for commercial gains. For this it has put a cap of 15,000 SMSes per month under the unlimited plan.

Source: CellBharat

Ergonomics researchers are starting to wonder whether text messaging is putting the younger generation at risk for some overuse injuries — once reserved for older adults who have spent years in front of a computer. Science Daily reports.

At this year’s annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Judith Gold, an assistant professor of Epidemiology at the College of Health Professions and Social Work presented preliminary research which suggested that among college students, the more they texted, the more pain they had in their neck and shoulders.

Text messaging is a fairly new technology, Gold says, so this is a new area of research among ergonomists. “But given the similarities in body position, findings from research on overuse injuries from computers could be applicable here,” she said.

Source: Science Daily

Twitter will be available in India on SMS only on the Airtel network. There is exclusivity for the same for 4 weeks, in which only Airtel consumers will be able to use the service on SMS across the nation. This period of exclusivity is something that we want to take advantage of and make sure that Brand Airtel can own the property Twitter in consumer mind space.

For details on how to use Twitter on Airtel visit this page on Airtel site.

How to use Twitter ?

How does one register for Twitter?

New User
• SMS Signup to 53000 @ Re 1 per SMS
• Follow instructions to go ahead and complete the registration

Existing User – Wanting to link their device to the Twitter A/c
• SMS Start to 53000 @ Re 1 per SMS
• Follow instructions to complete linking your Airtel phone to your Twitter A/c

General Guidelines & Keywords to Twitter Use
http://help.twitter.com/forums/59008/entries/14020