 pop- ular application of the Internet, groups of like-minded people, so-called com- munities of interest, have begun to use nonvoice mobile services as a means to chat and discuss. Because of its synergy with the Internet, GPRS would enable mobile users to participate fully in existing Internet chat groups rather than need- ing to set up their own groups that are dedicated to mobile users. Because the number of participants is an important factor determining the value of participation in the news group, the use of GPRS here would be advanta- geous. GPRS will not, however, support point-to-multipoint services in its first phase, hindering the distribution of a single message to a group of peo- ple. As such, given the installed base of SMS-capable devices, we would expect SMS to remain the primary bearer for chat applications in the fore- seeable future, although experimentation with using GPRS is likely to com- mence sooner rather than later. Textual and Visual Information A wide range of content can be delivered to mobile phone users ranging from share prices, sports scores, weather, flight information, news head- lines, prayer reminders, lottery results, jokes, horoscopes, traffic, location- Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. GPRS Introduction GPRS Introduction sensitive services, and SO on. This information does not necessarily need to be textual-it may be maps or graphs or other types of visual information. The length of a short message of 160 characters suffices for delivering information when it is quantitative, such as a share price or a sports score or temperature. When the information is of a qualitative nature, however, such as a horoscope or news story, 160 characters is too short other than to tantalize or annoy the information recipient because they receive the head- line or forecast but little else of substance. As