The year I lived in Ireland, for grad school, I had an account with Vodafone IE. The only thing that I really like about Vodafone IE, other than they had the best data coverage all around Ireland in 2005-2006, was the web based sms/text messaging.
Everyone who had a Vodafone account, be it a pay as you go or a monthly tariff, could log into the Vodafone IE website and send up to 300 texts a month from their web based account area free of charge. This was a win-win for both Vodafone and for the customer. A win for Vodafone in that their customers were logging into their web site daily, if not staying logged in the whole time they were at a computer. And a big win for the customer, esp. the pay as you go folks, as they got 300 free sms/texts a month if they were logged in to their account on the Vodafone website.
I wish AT%26amp;T in the US would have this. I hate texting. Really, I do. I hate sending texts and I hate receiving them. I mostly hate receiving them as it means I am obligated to reply. I am phone call and email kind-of-gal, but I have plenty of friends and family members whose first preference of communication is sms/text.
If AT%26amp;T would give me 300 free texts to any mobile phone, and not just another AT%26amp;T subscriber, a month if I was logged into my account on wireless.att.com, then as a person who is at her computer all day %26amp; most nights, I would send a lot more texts. It would be convenient to send them from a full keyboard and I wouldn't feel frustrated. AT%26amp;T could have the win of having my eyes on their site more than the once a month log in that I do now to pay my bill.
How about AT%26amp;T? Other than setting up the interface on the customer's account front page and having a link to the sms gateway set up, it would give ou all a big payoff. Plenty of us would run over our free 300 and then you would have another revenue stream. Right now you all have a half-assed send an SMS to only one another AT%26amp;T subscriber that is hidden in a menu, why not do it right, do it big, do it to any mobile phone? Or even allow more than one recipient at a time?
Skype now has sms/text that I can send from my Mac's desktop to any other mobile phone in the world for only 9¢, so why don't you?