MSN, Vodafone Launch PC-to-Mobile IM

MSN announced on Thursday that it had reached a deal with Vodafone to bring the MSN Messenger service to the European phone operator's 155 million customers. Vodafone users will pay for the service through their monthly bill, and messenger users will pay through packages made available through the service.

Vodafone already has a service known as Vodafone Messenger, which allows customers to talk to one another from either mobile-to-mobile or pc-to-mobile and vice versa. Today's announcement adds the capability to talk to MSN contacts an added option.

While MSN Messenger can send an SMS message to a mobile device, the feature is only one way as the recipient cannot respond to it. Only customers with Microsoft smartphones can hold live conversations, although with most mobile phone operators it requires the purchase of a data plan.

The addition to MSN Messenger will allow for users to see if contacts are online or offline from any Vodafone handset. Users will also be able to see the text of whole conversations as well.

"IM is a growing part of the increasingly important mobile messaging market," Peter Bamford, chief marketing officer for Vodafone said in a statement. "By bringing our collective customers together, we'll deliver more options for staying in touch when messaging. Our agreement will grow IM and SMS, meaning additional revenue for Vodafone."

The service will be launched across several of Vodafone's European markets before the end of this year.