Windows Phone Thoughts: World-Wide SMS

Thoughts reader Rob Cornelssen sent us this message, and I thought I'd pass it along - I found it quite interesting. I don't know much about the cellular world, so this was a bit of a revalation to me. Hey, I only got a GSM provider about a month ago. :)

"I'm in an area that cannot get a good GSM signal, so I cannot SMS to my friends in Europe. I did some digging over the past couple of days and found that Verizon (my provider), VoiceStream and Cingular among US providers use InphoMatch as their primary SMS carrier and interoperability provider. In doing some sleuthing within InphoMatch, I was able to confirm that all of the non-GSM providers supported by InphoMatch will be rolling out international messaging capabilities within the next few months, as InphoMatch is interconnecting their domestic platform with the GSM Association's global network. While we won't get GPRS capabilities, at least we now can send and receive SMS messages from around the world. I give you this information because there are many of us out here frustrated by the lack of GSM coverage and the inability to communicate with the rest of the world - at least this will bring us a little closer to reality until GSM providers can increase their coverage."