Verizon Wireless just announced that its customers sent and received more than 10 BILLION text messages in June, 2007.  Now, think about that... that's ONE carrier in ONE country - so how many messages do you figure the entire world sends and receives each month?  Lots and lots of billions, that's for sure.  And carriers love text messaging for many reasons which I'll get into in just a little while, but the most interesting thing about text messaging is something that very, very few people know: it wasn't designed to be used by consumers. 

That's right - text messaging wasn't designed to be used by consumers.  It was designed with a completely different purpose in mind.  Before we delve into that, though, let's get one thing clear: text messaging (also known as "SMS") is amazingly, incredibly, stunningly profitable for wireless companies.  That's why they love the idea of teenagers sending messages day and night, why they encourage the idea of text alerts for everything from storm warnings to security breaches to traffic updates and more.  These messages represent the type of revenue that carriers (and, in fairness to them, pretty much every other business) just loves: almost pure profit.  

Text messaging - or "SMS" for "Short Messaging Service" was originally designed with an entirely different purpose in mind.  The service was designed for carriers to be able to send messages to users; messages about bills being due, prepaid balances running down, cell sites out of commission, etc.  In short, a way for carriers to communicate with their customers, not for customers to communicate with each other.  But, somewhere along the way, users figured out that they could send messages to each other and a revolution began.  Talk to any teenager (or Gen-X/Y) and they'll tell you that they "text" a whole lot more than they talk.  

Why is this a good thing for the carriers?  Simple:

1. Text messages are data, not voice, which means the carriers can pack a whole lot more of them into the existing channels on their system than they can conversations. 
   
2. Text messages don't have to be (but almost always are) delivered in real-time.  Does it really matter to you whether a text message that you send gets delivered two seconds after you send it or twenty seconds after you send it?  In 99.99% of the situations, no, it won't matter.  In the other .001%, you'll probably call anyway. 
   
3. The channels that carry text messages are used for data and thus the addition of all the text message activity doesn't interfere with the voice call carrying capacity of the service provider. 
   

But text messaging is a good thing for users, too.  You can get an unlimited text messaging plan on many carrier's systems now that allow you to text anyone else on their system (similar to their "mobile-to-mobile calling) for $5-$10/month and communicate with everyone you know who uses the same carrier for next to nothing.  Imagine if you became really good at this - you could reduce your voice communication bill to next to nothing and do most of your communication with people you need to remain in contact with via text.

Think of it as email for your phone - but email that's limited to 160 characters per message.   Fast, cheap, incredibly efficient. 

How's that for a turnabout of events - a service that was never supposed to be used by consumer becomes one of the most popularly used features of cellular systems around the world... and generates profit for the providers at the same time.  It's one of the few real win-win situations in the wireless business and in this case it's a big win for the business and the customer both.