11/14/2007

Free text messaging from your cell to US-numbers and intl. Mobiles

Some of my readers are going to be pretty happy campers now! Some of you get charged way too much for the text-messages they are sending to US cellphones. And some of you do not pay anything for data-air time (may be a data flat fee though). Save your money for outgoing text messages! Google is so kind to offer free text-messaging/SMS to US-numbers. Simply direct your browser that is running on your mobile device to
http://toolbar.google.com/send/sms/index.php
Enter the number of the person you would like to send a text-message to, and make sure you choose the right carrier from the drop-down menu.
Enter your text, hit send, and be surprised how quickly it is delivered!
Enjoy!

hmm, okay, so you want to send free text messages worldwide?? Let's assume you pay for every text-message you send. (-text-messages to cellphones in your own country and other countries)
Go to http://gizmosms.com/ with your phone's browser.
Enter the number, the message and the security code and hit send. Now that was the easy to understand part. However, the recipient has to enable this kind of messaging first! What the service basically does is sending an email instead of a text-message to the recipients phone. Every phone supports this idea. Receiving emails is free for some and expensive for some others.
Everybody can get an email-to-sms address provided by their carrier/network operator.
In my case I had to send a single text-message to 8000. I instantly received a text-message which included my email-to-sms address (017XXXXXXXX@t-mobile-sms.de).
I'm now allowed to receive 100 free email-to-sms messages to my cellphone- each month. (The daily max is 10 messages). So as long as your recipient has enabled this service u can text him for free, either by using gizmosms or your regular email-software. You read it correctly. You don't have to use gizmosms for the same purpose.

Of course that can be the email-application on your phone but also email that u can send with a regular computer.
So what I do is, I establish a WLAN/Wifi connection. I write an email to an 01xXXXXXXXX@t-mobile-sms.de address for example and then I send it.
There you have it. International text-messages at absolutely NO COST!
Alright, imagine you are on the go, outside, close to the desert. No Wifi available.
I could connect to the net via GPRS/UMTS which will cost me 0.09€ a minute. If I send my pre-written email within this one minute then the email-to-sms costs me still almost nothing compared to what I have paid regularily. Some international text-messages are between 1.50€-2.00€. So I really saved a lot.

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