On Wednesday, at around 7pm, I signed my phone onto Yahoo! Instant Messenger, just in case someone felt like getting in touch with me while I was in the pub.
Five minutes ago, I received four text messages on my phone in quick succession: one informing me I'd been signed on to YIM!, two messages from friends, and a final text alerting me that I had been signed off again.
By my estimate, this makes the new definition of 'instant' somewhere close to forty-four hours.
Yes, they shouldn't be using the word "instant" to describe anything to do with SMS. The messaging hardware for most network providers in Australia is over utilised, and was only ever spec'd for "best effort" in the first place.
If you think that's bad though, you should see the reliability stats for pagers!
The SMS services in Malaysia *are* in fact instant, and are reliable enough to be used for banking and so forth.
The SMS services in Malaysia *are* in fact instant, and are reliable enough to be used for banking and so forth.
There are the occasional slipups but you receive notifications of failures, so it isn't too bad. It is at the point where I sms people when making appointments, just because it is easier.