Everyone in the industry knows that text messaging, or short messaging service (SMS), has turned into one of the biggest unplanned growth engines in wireless communications. Just a few years ago, few thought the technology would take hold in the United States, as it had in other parts of the world. Now, SMS seems to be unstoppable in its usage, both in sheer messages and in the variety of ways it is used.

No longer simply used to send 160-character messages between friends, SMS is now used for alerts, to market and advertise, to buy Cokes or movie tickets, to make donations to relief funds, for voting and polling, to help deliver content and applications, and for a myriad other applications that keeps growing.

CTIA says more than 7.2 billion SMS messages were sent over U.S. carrier networks in June, more than double the 2.8 billion messages the same month a year earlier. Revenues from SMS traffic increased 154 percent in that time period, to $1.24 billion.

NO STOPPING IT Analysts don't see anything that will stop the growth of SMS usage. Analyst David Chamberlain of In-Stat, a sister company of Wireless Week, recently forecast that worldwide 878.3 billion text messages will be sent in 2005, rising to 1.5 trillion in 2008. The Asia/Pacific region is the hotbed of messaging, with more than 70 percent of the world's volume (See chart on page 7).

Yet even as messaging traffic continues to grow, Chamberlain says revenues will slow because competition will force price cuts. Still, he says, carriers will continue to reap good margins because SMS has little overhead.

"Short codes are not just for marketing," says Jeff Simmons, director of technology programs for CTIA. "You can use them for gaming, voting, a whole host of applications that include fund-raising."

The use of SMS as a fund-raising tool was highlighted during the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2005 show last month. CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent cited the use of SMS to make donations to help victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. CTIA spearheaded the industry's initiative, which asked subscribers to text "help" to the short code "2help" [24357] to make a $5 donation to the Red Cross. By early October, the effort raised nearly $115,000.

Probably the biggest early use of SMS for fund-raising was for the victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia last Dec. 26 that resulted in 220,000 dead or missing. Andrew Bud, executive chairman of the messaging infrastructure company mBlox, says an SMS charity campaign was put together in five days to raise money to help the victims.

"SMS as a means of giving to charity has come alive in 2005," Bud says.

The tsunami relief campaign was set up in cooperation with MTV and UNICEF. mBlox followed by helping with an SMS campaign in July for the LiveAid Concert. In the latter case, people could sign electronic petitions using SMS or they could buy content, with the proceeds going to relief efforts.

Bud says SMS charity campaigns also expand the reach of the technology. A national SMS tsunami appeal in Italy helped raise about $50 million and there was evidence that many of the donations came from people who had never used SMS before, he says.

SMS charity campaigns bear some similarities to using text messaging to vote for performers on TV shows, such as the hugely successful use for "American Idol," but there is one big difference. Bud says the relief efforts are put together very quickly through a combination of hard work and streamlined cooperation among the carriers and their enablers.

Bud says the campaign for LiveAid was developed in 10 days, requiring enormous effort to provision the short codes, set up the SMS transmission capacity, and especially smooth out the normal approval process by the operators.

SHORT CODE INFLUX Of course, using SMS for marketing has caught fire since the industry adopted short codes. CTIA's Simmons says there are thousands of leased short codes using five numerals, so many that the association is exploring the possibility of expanding short codes to six or more numbers.

SMS has been used for years by brands wishing to increase loyalty and generate sales. Much of this has been to reach consumers outside stores, but in-store campaigns also are catching on. One example is Vanity Shops, which has 175 stores in 22 states with clothing targeting 16-to-22-year-old consumers, especially females.

Vanity has used in-store and in-mall television as a way of attracting and marketing to customers. This fall they started a campaign using SMS.

"This is a new way to reach them where [young people] are and in their world," says Denise Mathern, Vanity's marketing manager. The chain doesn't do much newspaper advertising because its audience doesn't read the daily newspaper. Mostly it has tried to capture their attention when they are at the shopping malls, she says, which is where the age group typically spends a lot of time.

Vanity linked up with a youth media network, Access, which provides programming for televisions in stores and shopping malls around the country. Roman Tsunder, Access' CEO, says the company is now layering SMS on top of the TV programming so it can reach shoppers both inside and outside the store.

The first campaign featured a Universal Records band, All-American Rejects, and their song "Dirty Little Secret." Consumers were encouraged by in-store displays to send a text message to a short code asking one of the band members what their secret was, with a response on a return message. Consumers also could buy wallpaper featuring the band.

Mathern says the first campaign was to establish communication with the customers. Later, Vanity probably will send an SMS to those users with a notice of a sale or even coupons for specials.

"We feel like it is a slam dunk way to reach them, especially as cell plans for texting are so cheap," she says.

Tsunder says text messaging has reached such a critical mass in the United States, with the ability to reach 20 million consumers at one time, that it only makes sense to use it for marketing. He says retailers are learning that they need to be involved in their customers' lives and that a cell phone is one of the most personal items for most people. More than half of the consumers under the age of 25 have used a cell phone to respond to a brand promotion, Tsunder says.

Another example of the spreading use of SMS was shown off by Simplewire at the CTIA Wireless I.T. show. It demonstrated how an SMS could be sent to a Coca-Cola machine to purchase a drink.

Fandango, the largest online and phone movie ticketing service, is using a short code (36346 or FNDGO) for consumers to access movie and theater information, including show times and reviews. Fandango plans on using the service, developed with application developer Crisp Wireless, to send virtual movie tickets to handsets so they can be read by a barcode reader at the theater.

GETTING THE VOTE There seems to be new SMS uses every day that employ voting. The newspaper USA Today recently launched a premium SMS sweepstakes program developed with Dwango Wireless. Readers can respond to SMS questions sent to their phones (46872 or GOUSA) and each answer, which costs 50 cents, enters them in a prize drawing for things like TV sets and DVD players.

Texting has been used for some time at concerts for fans to send messages to stage screens or the bands. Vibes Media has been doing that for years with bands like Green Day and Backstreet Boys. Vibes also has a text-to-win promotion on buses. Pangolin SMS has applications for audience voting at conferences, trade shows and the like, as well as live TV chat services.

Where text goes, speech can't be too far behind. The European company Materna has started offering text-to-speech services for SMS that allow text messages to be delivered as voice messages to a non-SMS phone, including a wireline phone.

Flirting with a cell phone is picking up with services like those offered by Enpocket, which has set up mobile dating services for Match.com in the United States and similarly in the United Kingdom, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, India and Spain. Users text in a short code, creating a profile of themselves using SMS and then chat anonymously with those matching their preferences.

SMS also is used in fraud-detection. mBlox recently launched a service with MasterCard International using SMS as an alerting tool. Instead of card holders receiving a phone call from a service agent, SMS alerts are sent when there has been unusual activity on an account. mBlox chairman Bud says SMS will cut bank costs, improve customer experience and decrease fraud.

Not bad for a simple texting capability that some in the industry predicted wouldn't find much of an audience in the United States as recently as four years ago. That was before the carriers started promoting it, as well as making SMS interoperable among networks.