Text Messaging Proves Useful

Text messaging is more than just a way for kids or teenagers to keep in touch. It has proved invaluable in several different situations. Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example of how this works. During that time, as well as other similar situations, when the phone networks are heavily loaded it can be very difficult if not impossible to get a call through. However, since text messages are data they are transmitted essentially when the space becomes available on a network, giving them a better chance of eventually getting through.

More and more companies are beginning to realize the value of supplying text messaging services. For example, Croydon Primary Care deals primarily with asthmatics, heart disease and bronchitis and they have designed a project that will automatically send text messages to people that have signed up, each morning about air pollution levels.

Washington DC has come up with even more ways to make text messaging useful. When coming up with ways to alert citizens of an impending incident that may require them to take action, they did the obvious ones of sending emergency messages to land line phones of citizens that sign up for the service as well as setting up better equipment at local radio stations for emergency broadcasting. They have also devised a plan to send emergency text messages to text capable devices such as cell phones, email, pagers, etc. It has the capacity of sending 18,000 text messages a minute to the people that have signed up for the service. That would definitely be a huge help in an emergency situation.

Surely there will be many other programs and projects created as text messaging becomes even more commonplace.