MANILA, Philippines - Chikka.com, the popular Internet gateway to texting mobile phones, now supports free SMS to any mobile phone in the United States.
Formerly available only to select carriers, the free text service now terminates to the six major operators across the US — Nextel, Verizon, Alltel, Boost, AT&T, and Sprint.
“Chikka has always been about providing great value to online and mobile communities. This development immediately benefits all online Filipinos anywhere in the world with friends and relations in the USA,” says Chito Bustamante, Chikka chief executive officer.
It is estimated that over 3.1 million Filipinos are in the US, and according to the company, some two million sign-ins every month to its flagship Chikka Text Messenger would come from that country.
“Online users in the US make up the single largest Chikka community outside the Philippines and the new service to the US also means that they will be able to sign in to their instant messenger (IM) with one identity, that is their phone number. What this further implies is that when they go offline, they can continue to receive and reply to instant messages on their phones via SMS,” says Bustamante.
Next to North America, countries in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, make up the second largest online community for Chikka (outside the Philippines).
But the company also reports strong usage from countries like Singapore.
Bustamante says, “These countries are bastions of young Filipino expatriates and professionals. We see Chikka itself as part of the evolution of a very sophisticated Global Filipino, so sophisticated that he possesses a communication tool that marries the best of Web and mobile technologies.”
With Chikka connecting to all carriers in the US, the service is made available to over 260 million mobile subscribers.
While considered to be fairly recent adopters of the mobile texting culture, US mobile users were reported to have sent one trillion messages in 2008, or over 3.5 billion text messages per day. This figure is triple that of the 363 billion messages they sent in 2007.
“The rapidly evolving mobile landscape in the US also makes for a very exciting market. The mobile technologies we have developed have a universal application. And we believe that our highly sophisticated, ingenious and innovative mobile culture has a lot to impart to the rest of the online and mobile world,” says Bustamante.
Chikka Text Messenger’s mobile network now includes the US, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Guam and the Philippines.
With 55 million registering to use the service since 2001, it is probably one of the most widely used Internet and mobile-based communication medium by Filipinos worldwide.
The community welcomed over 10 million new registered users in the past year.