Philippine Cell Phones

The craze for sending text message by phone started [in 1999] when Globe introduced prepaid cards that enabled students, soldiers [and others] too poor for a long-term subscription to start using cellular phones.

People quickly figured out how to express themselves on the phone’s alphanumeric keypad…. “Generation Txt,” as the media dubbed it, was born. Sending text messages does not require making a call. People merely type in a message and the recipient’s phone number, hit the phone’s send key and off it goes to the operator’s message center, which forwards it to the recipient. Because messages are exchanged over the frequency the network uses to identify phones rather than the frequencies their owners talk on, messages can be sent and received the instant a phone is turned on–and can even be received when a phone call is in progress.

Since then, SMS and Prepaid SMS services have flourished in the Philippines.