British Prime Minister Embraces Mobile Users With Text Messaging

[Kris Kumar]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3804582' target='_blank'>http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3804582</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Prime Minister Tony Blair today took a tentative step into the modern age of communications technology by taking part in a live text-chat with thousands of mobile phone users...He was able to answer only a fraction of the 6,000 questions sent in by O2 mobile-users on issues ranging from Iraq to street crime, pensions, health and immigration."</i><br /><br />I wonder which smart phone Prime Minister Tony Blair would have preferred if he had decided to type the replies himself? :-) Will it be a BlackBerry, a Treo or a Microsoft Smartphone? You can check out the complete transcript of the SMS chat over <a href="http://www.o2.co.uk/pm?ref=hpmod6img">here.</a> And looks like the British PM is responsible for increasing the flow of text messages in UK. ;-) Mobile Data Association has released the October 2004 text messaging figures for UK, and is reporting an all time high of 2.3 billion messages, a 27% increase over the same period in 2003.

[TANKERx]

If he wasn't using a full on PDA/Phone like a PocketPC Phone Edition or a Nokia Communicator, I suspect that he'd probably use a Series60 or UIQ Symbian Smartphone for ease of use (you must remember that a spokesperson told the BBC that "the Prime Minister has been taugh how to text"), so he would have wanted it as easy as possible and unlikely to crash should a call come in while he was doing something else.

[Mike Temporale]

Chances are, he was using some PC based application. That would allow him to reply quickly, and easily.

[Kris Kumar]

As Mr Blair was talking, it took three moderators to send his responses via laptop computers to phones around the country over the GPRS network, which allows mobile-users to access the Internet through their handset screen.

[Kris Kumar]

... and unlikely to crash should a call come in while he was doing something else.

:rotfl:

I am sure "if he had to type the replies himself" the preference would have been for something that has a keyboard like the Nokia Communicator or BlackBerry.