Text plan to take on cell phone accounts

A SMALL South Carolina company says it has a cure for the modern plague of budget-busting cell phone charges racked up by teenagers: a gadget for text-messaging that is not a cell phone.

Zipit Wireless Inc plans to make available a text-messaging plan for its Zipit Wireless Messenger 2, a device the size of a fat wallet that uses Wi-Fi hotspots to do free instant messaging with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

Zipit users who sign up for a text-messaging plan will now be able to contact cell phone users, as well as communicate by instant message.

The plan will cost US$4.99 for up to 3,000 messages per month when it formally launches in February. Between December 20 and the launch, text messaging is free on the device.

Cell-phone carriers typically charge 10 or 15 cents per text message, or US$15 a month to add 1,500 or "unlimited" text messages to a calling plan. The service costs almost nothing to provide, making it "one of the most profitable applications known to man," according to Morgan Stanley's telecommunications analyst, Simon Flannery.

The Zipit 2 itself costs US$149.99. It has a color screen and was launched in November as a follow-up to the monochrome original Zipit which came out in 2004.

The Zipit 2 will be able to receive as well as send text messages. But unlike a cell phone, the Zipit will not accept text messages from numbers that have not been added to an approved list by the user, which should make it immune to spam sent as text messages. Also unlike a cell phone, it will not be able to send text messages to more than one recipient at a time.

The Zipit belongs to a small category of devices that have attempted to capitalize on the craze for instant messaging by making it available off the computer. Sony Corp's Mylo device, which was aimed at students, is another example.