Ban on SMS charges costly

The Philippine government's plan to remove charges on text messaging is expected to cut mobile phone operators' revenues by more than P60 billion annually, says Manila Standard Today.

The country's two largest wireless operators, Smart Communications and Globe Telecom, in 2007 generated more than P60 billion in revenues from text messaging.

Last year, the Philippines had 53.958 million mobile phone subscribers, most of them using cellular phones mainly to send and receive SMS. This translated into an SIM penetration rate of 60.8% in the country last year.

An official of the Philippine National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has belied claims of the Department of Transportation and Communications that telecommunications companies (telcos) should not charge cellular phone users for text messaging or SMS, reports ABS CBN News.

"There's nothing in the franchise that says telcos shouldn't charge consumers for SMS," NTC deputy commissioner Jorge Sarmiento told ABS-CBN's morning show, "Umagang Kay Ganda'.

Sarmiento said that although he has not reviewed the telcos' franchise contracts lately, he is certain the companies are allowed to charge clients for SMS.

Qnext has released an update of its unified communication and sharing suite that lets users communicate and share digital media as easily and instantly as they can send and receive messages, according to PR.com.

Qnext addresses the needs of millions of consumers and business users that want to consolidate their contacts, instantly and securely communicate and share digital content with anyone in real-time directly from their computer, no uploads to external services.

Qnext's communication capabilities include eight-way VOIP, four-way video conferencing and a multi-protocol instant messenger that supports Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, iChat, IRC, and MSN.