The Internet Society (ISOC) just issued a press release on its work to implement a text-messaging service that allows text to be sent and received on a character-by-character basis, "with each character sent and displayed immediately once typed, giving text the same conversational character as voice communication."

They have already document the technical process. To promote implementation, this week the developers launched the ‘Real-Time Text task force’ (R3TF) "an informal forum for engineers, motivated individuals, experts, companies and organisations", for which ISOC has provided incubation support.

Read the full press release at: http://www.isoc.org/tools/blogs/membernews/?p=103

This could be an important innovation. Among respondents to our Survey of User Needs who are deaf or hard of hearing, 56 percent said that text-messaging was an important wireless function.