Just days after the IBM ThinkPad threw a shindig for its 15th, now we've reason to don our party hats once more for yet another notable birthday. The mobile phone industry is celebrating the 15th year of the Short Message Service Center (SMSC), which was the "principal application behind text messaging first brought to market by Acision in 1992." Over the years, the basic SMSC box has evolved into an IP-based SMS architecture, and while early iterations had a capacity of ten messages per second, current setups can handle a nearly infinite amount (good thing, huh?). So here's to you, dear SMS, and while we certainly hope you manage to hang around another 15 years or so, how's about cooling off the perpetual price increases along the way?

[Thanks, John]

Following through on a promise to launch ahead of the iPhone juggernaut, Britain's Omnifone has officially gone live with its MusicStation all-you-can-eat mobile music service. The first rollout is on Sweden's Telenor, offering up unlimited downloads for a "small weekly fee" -- and what's more, data fees are built into the fee which should help alleviate the paranoia of bankruptcy-causing overages from creeping onto subscribers' bills. The service smacks of existing subscription music services; subscribers can download and listen to tracks 'til they're blue in the face, and they simply stop working if service is canceled. The key difference, of course, is that this is the first such service to squarely target phones. Following the Telenor launch, Omnifone looks to go live with a number of other European and Asian operators, though they've got no plans to crack the tough US nut for the time being.

[Thanks, Clemens M.]

UK-based Omnifone is using 3GSM today as the backdrop to announce its intriguing "MusicStation" service, promising an all-you-can-eat serving of music delivered over the air to handsets for £1.99 (about $3.88) a week -- about 8 quid a month, if our math's right. According to the company itself, Omnifone's goal is to get its service onto customer's handsets ahead of the iPhone's European launch at the end of the year, and if we have a good read on how well the iPhone's going to sell, we think that's a pretty good plan on its part. The first two operators to sign up for a MusicStation launch (of an alleged 23 in total) are Scandinavian carrier Telenor and South Africa's Vodacom, with several more European launches plan over the course of the year. The music selection may not be half bad, either, with a number of independent labels signed up alongside Universal. Music can be kept as long as the user maintains service, though the downside -- as with every other all-you-can-eat download service -- is that the tunes evaporate into thin air just as soon as it's canceled. All told, not a bad alternative to the offerings we've seen from carriers Statside so far, and with 23 operators apparently on the hook, we have to believe (read: hope) one or two might be on American soil.

[Via MocoNews]

It looks like the days of bloated roaming fees within Europe are nearly over. Orange, Telecom Italia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, and Wind have joined T-Mobile in an agreement to cap the rates they charge eachother within the European Economic Area – 45 euro cents per minute from October 2006 dropping to 36 euro cents per minute by October 2007. In time, that should result in a savings of nearly 50% for consumers travelling within Europe and from abroad as the proposed cap is extended to operators outside the sub-continent. An independent watchdog group will then monitor fee reductions on the open market and publish an index every six months. And what of Europe's largest carrier, Vodafone? Well, they're apparently sticking to their rather dubious "Vodafone Passport" scheme said to save punters 40% on roaming fees after registering for the service, after a "connection fee" of 75p per call and after April 2007 when the rate cuts would go into effect. Now this isn't the first time the cabal European operators have agreed to lower roaming tariffs so we'll just have to see how this plays. Just remember dear carriers, the world and Viv is watching.