New text-to-voice SMS

[Published on 04 March, 2002]

What happens if you send a Short Message Service (SMS) message
to a home or office telephone number?

Nothing, right? Because SMS messages only work with mobile phones, right?
Like everyone else, that is what one Straits Times reader thought until
the telephone rang at home the other day and he was surprised to hear
a computerised voice read out a message to him.

The friend who had sent him the SMS message had accidentally sent it
to his fixed-line home phone.

He tipped off The Straits Times. Checks showed that he had stumbled
onto a new text-to-voice SMS service being tested by SingTel,
the biggest mobile-phone operator here.