Kick the SMS habit this summer, urges Palringo

Texting too expensive and just too basic says instant messaging expert, as EU prepares to act on prices. July 2nd 2008 – London, UK - As Europe’s mobile firms hit the EU’s deadline yesterday to cut the cost of sending an SMS from abroad, mobile instant messaging company Palringo has urged people to kick the texting habit and move on to more flexible, more natural and cheaper ways to stay in touch while abroad.

“There are simply smarter alternatives,” argues 23 year old Martin Rosinski, Palringo’s founder and chief technology officer. “Instant messaging [IM] on

mobiles offers vocal instant messaging, picture messaging and text-based messaging, making it a better option, and does so at a fraction of the price of texting – making it an even smarter option.” “And many millions of people in the UK already use instant messaging on their home or work computer,” he said.

Rosinski cites simple facts to back up his point. Using Vodafone UK, sending and receiving data costs up to £5 per megabyte (MB) of data while travelling in the EU. One megabyte [1MB] is sufficient for Palringo to send and receive: - around 100,000 words by text-based message. This approximates to roughly 4,500 SMS messages and means that, using Palringo, it costs about 0.11 PENCE to send the equivalent of an SMS message [at £5 per MB] - up to 15 minutes of vocal instant messages. This is equivalent to about 33 pence per minute [at £5 per MB] - but means a personal, vocal instant message can be sent for just 5 pence - about 32 picture messages using a typical cameraphone - i.e., just under 16 pence per picture [at £5 per MB]