iText – SMS-based Web Services for Low-end Cell Phones

With the development of mobile wireless technology, more people are using their smart phones to browse Web sites, do social networking, and play online games. However, a significant fraction of people in developing regions are still using simple low-end devices with limited processing and communication capabilities. Access to Internet contents and services is currently available only for Internet-enabled, Internet-capable smart devices. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a Short Messaging Service (SMS)-based service to enable low-end cell phones to access Internet and Web services. In particular, we designed a service called iTex, allowing users to use Google web services through text messages even if they do not own Internet-enabled and Internet-capable smart devices.