SMS helps nab fugitive

Law enforcement officials in New York and Pennsylvania used a high-speed mobile phone network in the search for a fugitive charged with killing a New York State Trooper, Information Week reports.

When law enforcement officials realised they couldn`t communicate with their own radios as they closed in on Ralph "Bucky" Phillips near the New York border with Pennsylvania, they requested 20 cellphones from Cellular One, the report says.

The cellular provider had upgraded its GSM/GPRS/EDGE network in recent months, which enabled law enforcement officers to remain in touch with each other. The phones` text messaging capability was used extensively, said a spokesman for the mobile phone service provider.

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Ofcom, the sectoral regulator and competition authority for the UK broadcasting and telecommunications industries, will review the market for text messaging at a wholesale level, reports Times Online.

The regulator will examine wholesale text message termination charges - the sums that mobile operators charge each other to transfer texts on to their networks.

Ofcom also unveiled plans to cut the amount mobile operators can charge for taking each other`s calls and pledged to introduce controls on charges for voice calls on 3, the 3G mobile operator, for the first time, it says.

There has been an increase in customer demand worldwide for mobile instant messaging (IM) and e-mail. Consumers are staying connected with their friends and family with AOL, MSN and Yahoo IM and e-mail services on their mobile phones, according to an Oz Mobile press release.

Oz Mobile, a US consumer mobile messaging solution provider, says this increase has contributed to its Oz Mobile IM and Mobile Email clients being deployed on over 50 million phones.

Oz`s addressable end-user market includes over 860 million consumers who have mobile IM and mobile e-mail accounts with the world`s leading portals combined with all mobile subscribers of mobile operators globally who are deploying operator branded IM solutions.