Wireless Consortium Releases IM StandardsWireless Consortium Releases IM Standards

Mobile instant-messaging consortium Wireless Village released the first version of its technology standards Wednesday, aiming to provide a uniform standard for chat, content sharing, and messaging across wireless devices, PCs, and servers.

Use of the Wireless Village version 1.0 specifications will let users with different phones, on different networks, and using different service providers instant message each other and PC users, says Craig Peddie, general manager of Motorola Inc.'s Lexicus division and the company's representative in the Wireless Village collaboration.

"This all started late in 2000, when instant messaging was becoming all the buzz," Peddie explains. "We were starting to get lots of requests from carriers to offer wireless IM, and we knew we couldn't all come up with our own standards, so we said, 'Let's get something quick we agree on so we can deploy a wireless service.' " The initiative was founded in April by Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia, and it consists of more than a hundred handset makers, wireless service providers, and related companies.

Peddie says the first handsets built to comply with the standards should be available on the market within four to six months, and wireless service providers should offer fully developed compatible IM systems by year's end. That'll be good news for businesses, he says, since the standards will let managers use a single platform to communicate with workers both in the office and in the field. Says Peddie, "It's a good productivity booster."