Given figures released recently by the 3 mobile phone operators in Ireland, it is more than likely that the number of text messages that will be sent in Ireland will approach 4BILLION for 2005.  Value Ireland thought we'd look at how you can get value for money when sending texts.

This is partly also in follow up to a couple of occasions recently when the opportunities to send free SMS messages was mentioned on the Value Ireland Forum. Also, we can't help but notice the current advertising campaign from Vodafone telling us about 6c texts, or should that be 0.06 YoYos, or 0.6 of a Yo - you know the advert!!!

We'll look at the three primary categories in which as Irish consumers we can send text messages - on pre-paid mobiles, on pay monthly mobiles, and via numerous services on the internet. It's quite difficult to make straight comparisons on how much it costs to send an SMS message across each of the 3 countries in the market. We will compare basic prices that you would pay if you didn't take up any of the special offers or add-on packages offered by some of the networks.

After that, it's up to you how you want to spend your portion of the approximately €425million that Irish consumers spend when texting. We'll keep this updated as and when new offerings are made in the market. This will be most particularly of interest when the 3 Network join sometime in 2005.