Vodafone's failure to snap up AT&T Wireless this week was seen mainly as a clash of corporate titans. Hardly anyone seemed to notice some of the things happening in the background - like the explosion of text messaging in the US.
This may not have been the main reason for Vodafone's bid but it does open up exciting possibilities for the future. Until recently it has been presumed that text messaging failed to take off in the US because Americans are different and preferred alternatives like instant messaging and PDAs.
There is a much simpler explanation. They didn't do it because they couldn't. But now they can - and once they start they won't find it easy to break the habit.
The main obstacle to texting in the US was the lack of interconnections between the mobile phone networks. While Europe and most of Asia had standardised GSM technology (one of the most successful industrial policy decisions in recent memory) the US had multiple systems including TDMA, CDMA, iDen, as well as GSM, and they didn't communicate with each other very well, if at all.
During the past year that has all changed. There are still dozens of minor networks that haven't changed but most of the major ones now enable text messages to be sent between them to pay-for services like texting, ring tones, dating, voting and Java games.
As a result the US has now had the Eureka moment that Britain had at the beginning of 1998 when texting suddenly erupted after the operators opened up their networks to each other.
Earlier this month Mblox, the UK company based in London's fashionable Clerkenwell neighbourhood, and One World Interactive became the first companies to offer facilities to send premium text messages to large operators in the US. Andrew Bud, CEO of Mblox, hopes to use the experience he has gained in the UK to grab at least 25% of the US market.
Official figures are not yet available but unofficial ones suggest that more text messages are now being sent in the US than in (admittedly smaller) Britain. Texting was given a big boost by the SMS-voting element in American Idol, the US version of Pop Idol.
Last year 7.5m text messages were sent during the TV series according to AT&T (yes, the same AT&T that Vodafone tried to buy). This year 10 times as many votes were texted during the early stages as last year.
The opening up of the US market to texting - and its more profitable brother, premium SMS - has opened up huge opportunities for content providers. For the first time someone who dreams up a game or some other "content" in a back bedroom in Salford has a potential global market only a click away.
This, of course, was also true of the internet. But the internet never had, and still has not got, an easy way of enabling small content providers to be paid. Mobile phones have, thanks to premium messages. Also, the cost of producing mobile games or other content is far cheaper than console games or online games.
There is still a huge marketing problem - telling people your product is there - but anyone who can conquer that could make a killing. Another factor holding back content providers was the misguided way the telephone operators tried to keep a stranglehold on the revenues generated by the products they were transmitting.
Nothing could be likelier to kill the golden goose than to pay peanuts to the creative people at the beginning of the chain. There are now positive signs of change. Instead of trying to recoup the billions they coughed up for 3G licences by snatching up to 80% of the revenue generated, some operators are becoming more realistic.
The enlightened ones have realised that if they just take a (relatively) modest charge for transmission - which is what they do best - then they will get more business in the end because they won't have snuffed out the content providers at birth.
· Victor Keegan is editor of Guardian Online
