LONDON-Six European markets will soon have MSN Messenger, Microsoft’s instant messaging service, on mobile phones via short message service. Operators in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey will offer the messaging service.
The same operators also currently offer the MSN Hotmail e-mail service over SMS to a combined 24 million users in the six countries. MSN said the MSN Hotmail service, which has been available since last December in Europe, also will be offered by Swisscom in Switzerland and Proximus in Belgium by the end of June.
“We are also working on agreements to implement this service in other markets over the coming months,” said Vassili Le Moigne, MSN mobile manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Mobile instant messaging is available in the United States through VoiceStream, but this is the first European IM service.
