Premium subscription services will offer periodic alerts for headlines, TV show plot lines, sports scores and possibly even civic-minded warnings such as Amber Alerts or terrorism information. Television and radio will continue to add interactivity to their programming by letting viewers "vote off" contestants from reality or talent shows; phone users will be able to send messages to celebrities on talk shows to complement online chats, and music lovers will be able to request their favorite songs by sending a text message to a common short code or five-digit telephone number using whichever wireless service they are subscribed to.

Delivering this timely information via SMS will help mobile phone users to optimize their time and make last minute plans. For example, premium text messaging will offer traffic and weather updates to help avoid delays. Equally valuable will be the capability of sending a message to request a brief restaurant or movie review when trying to decide whether to head uptown or downtown on Saturday night.

Media companies such as Disney and News Corp. (owner of the Fox networks) are already launching premium services within their TV channels and programs that deliver useful and time-sensitive information to the never-out-of-reach mobile phone. According to analyst firm Alexander Resources, premium text-based "infotainment" services revenue will grow from $1.5 billion in 2005 to $2.7 billion in 2008.

Text messaging adoption rates in the United States are growing in both mature and young adult markets. According to the mobileYouth 2002 report, "The youth Market in North America is ready to explode, particularly in prepay and SMS usage -- the latter of which will surge 1070% from 2002 to 2004, with 1.1 billion messages being sent monthly across the US networks by the 5-24 year old demographic." In addition, the mobileYouth 2002 report predicts that 36 million Americans, ages 5-24 years will own mobile phones by 2004.

Service providers have the financial incentives to develop even more innovative information services that will take advantage of the mobile phone as the most accessible device for interacting with a broad audience.

Steinar Svalesen is the CEO of Telenor Mobile Interactive USA, an interactive media company, develops and implements innovative mobile applications based on cross-carrier premium messaging capabilities. The company is a fully owned subsidiary of Telenor Mobile, the wireless business area of Telenor ASA (Nasdaq: TELN) headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Steiner can be reached at steinar.svalesen@telenor-usa.com and http://www.telenor-interactive.com.