To hail a taxi, stick out a thumb and txt

People can soon summon an Alert taxi with a text message from their cellphones, thanks to Auckland software developer TxtCentre.

Alert managing director Brian Lough said Telecom and Vodafone had confirmed the number for the service, which would be launched this week.

Customers text the word "taxi" and the pick-up address to 8989, and the message will go to Alert's call centre. There is a 50c charge for the message.

"It's good from a customer's point of view. They know their text message has got through and there is no waiting on phones," Lough said.

TxtCentre director Warren Tobin said the service cost Alert nothing, and TxtCentre received a share of the text-message (or SMS) revenue.

"This is not confined to taxis. The TxtCentre application provides an SMS channel for any call centre software," he said.

"We can interact through our gateways to call centre applications to push data back out by SMS, so you can do quite complicated things like checking your bank balance or checking the free minutes on your phone."

The software is also used by the Wellington call centre for Tokyo-based IT recruitment and services firm Access Technologies.

Tobin said TxtCentre's main markets would be overseas, and it had taken out patents and established a beachhead office in Britain.

"We wanted it running with the telcos here before we took it offshore.

"Britain has a very sophisticated SMS market, with 55 million messages sent a day and 9000 call centres. We expect the big numbers will come from there and Australia."

He said TxtCentre offered significant savings for call centres because they could avoid the cost of receiving calls from cellphones, or the risk of alienating customers by refusing such calls.

They could also automate and streamline repetitive tasks.

Tobin was one of the founders of customer management software developer The Great Elk, now Stayinfront, which he left last year.

TxtCentre

How to enter

* Mobile application developers are invited to enter the Frontier transtasman competition run by the Herald and Ericsson.

* The competition seeks to find the best cellphone applications from New Zealand and Australia.

* There are prizes for winners - and the chance to pitch applications to potential inventors.

* See Ericsson: Frontier for details.