PC messages reach phones

By PETER GRIFFIN and REUTERS

Microsoft is winning support in Europe for a mobile version of its hugely popular Instant Messenger software, but local cellphone operators are still weighing up their options.

Microsoft this week teamed with eight European cellphone networks to offer a version of Instant Messenger that allows messages sent from a PC to a user who is "off-line" to be forwarded to his or her cellphone as a text message.

Replies from a cellphone will land back in the Instant Messenger dialogue box on the computer. Phone users will be charged per message received or sent.

Phone companies in Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Turkey and Norway, with a total of 31 million customers, launched the service yesterday, in conjunction with Microsoft's MSN unit.

America Online and VoiceStream, owned by Germany's Deutsche Telekom, have offered rival AOL's message service to phones in the United States since November.

While the web version of Instant Messenger has proved the hit in New Zealand, neither Telecom nor Vodafone have plans to offer the cellphone version. Both offer services allowing e-mail to be accessed by mobiles or forwarded to them.