Facebook users can send messages to any UK mobile subscriber

A pilot test of a service allowing mobile users on any UK network to send text and picture messages from within Facebook to any UK mobile user is being conducted by Vodafone UK.

Customers using the service will be charged by Vodafone 10p per text message and 30p for picture messages within the trial period that wasn’t speicifed by the company. Yet a user receives 25 text message credits at sign up. The payment for the service is made beforehand with Pay4it and then there are 30 days given to use credits.

The initiative as developed in team-work with the Value Creation Centre, a Vodafone joint innovation initiative with IBM and the Vodafone Internet Services division at Vodafone UK.

If successful the service will be possibly launched in other countries. Pieter Knook Vodafone Group internet services director notes that the UK market was chosen for the trial in view of a large number of social network users accounting for 20 million.