Pacific Magazine > Magazine > March 1, 2001

Telecom

Saipan's New Net-To-Phone

Island Cell Phone Users Connect to Internet

By Aldwin R. Fajardo

The Northern Marianas may be surrounded by Pacific Ocean, but that isn’t isolating the Commonwealth from keeping pace with Internet technology advances which are common in industrialized nations.

Gone are the days when data sent through a computer are received only by another computer. Verizon is changing the shape of telecommunications use in the Northern Marianas by allowing its subscribers to receive text messages in their cellular phones sent through the Internet.

By logging on to the website www.web2mobile.com, people from anywhere in the world can send text messages to friends and relatives who subscribe to Verizon's digital mobile telephone on Saipan.

Verizon marketing and communications administrator Kerry Deets says the company's Internet-based partner — Web2mobile.com — allows non-subscribers to communicate with their friends who carry Verizon digital phones.

They can also send text messages using the website to other digital mobile phone subscribers in Guam, Hawaii and the mainland United States, says Deets, adding that use of the Internet as a means of sending messages to the telephone is expected to boom on the islands in the coming years.

Verizon is also looking at the possibility of installing a technology that would allow digital telephone users to send e-mails to anywhere in the world using their handheld units.

Verizon currently uses Time Division Multiple Access, the first digital standards to be developed for cellular communications. Verizon's TDMA technology is currently capable of all the enhanced features enjoyed by mobile telephone subscribers in the Philippines and in Asia, that include short text messaging, systems that allow computers to hook into the Internet, and units that can receive local and international news.