Guy Kewney

Something strange has happened to my office colleagues. This year, they're in my pocket, not just around me when I'm at my desk.

Two years ago, I lost my job. With it, I lost my friends - or so I expected. Nor was this the first time I'd been 'let go' from a job.

Each time it's been hard, and one of the hardest parts was losing my colleagues, who were also my closest friends. This time, however, the wrench was much easier to take.

And this had nothing to do with my greater maturity, wisdom or strength of character; but technology. The day after I left my job, I got up as normal. Instead of going into the office, I stayed at home.

But nevertheless I was able to watch the gang come in to work, exactly as normal. Around 8.30, Matt turned his PC on. "Hi!" I said. "You're early!" We chatted.

An hour later, Graeme joined the group. "Hello, Guy," he remarked when he spotted me. "How are you feeling after yesterday?" The difference, as you will realise if you're an addict yourself, was the Instant Messenger (IM) service.

I first got hooked on chatting to people in faraway places when The Source and BIX started up, and I've been an inhabitant of Compulink (CIX) since 7 February 1987. Most of my close friends are also members.

But networks like The Well and AOL aren't the same as the instant messengers. When I sit down at the keyboard, AOL IM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger tell all my friends I've connected to the internet. Similarly, I can see them signing on, one by one, from all over the world.

Now we come to the interesting bit: the difference between IM and SMS texting. In a real sense, the social change that I experienced when the whole office joined Yahoo is one anybody with a mobile phone can sample.

But the difference is equally real: texting can be costly whereas instant messaging is mostly free while you're online. And there's something more immediate about the way IM tells you who is there, when they switch on and log in.

I believe that the popularity of IM poses a real problem for the mobile and wireless networks. Sit down in a coffee shop these days, and you can go online. Pretty cool, except of course you wouldn't really be happy about paying unless you had some urgent work to do.

The point about IM is that you're aware of it, but it's in the background. You'll have an idea of who else is in the room, but you can ignore the chit-chat. And you might feel that £6 an hour on a mobile phone is rather too much to pay for that.

The solution? Buy a smartphone, and log onto the GPRS network. GPRS is, for most serious purposes, useless. It is flaky and unreliable, with huge data latency problems, but it's virtually free because so little data goes across it.

It's starting to leak out from the desktop to the mobile user, and it's a real problem for providers which charge by the hour, or by the minute. It is, I will predict, going to be one of the big stories of 2004, as people start learning how to use smartphones as tiny computers.

But a smartphone's power, friendliness, and 'always with you' link to your community only work if you can be connected for one minute for roughly the same cost as if you're connected all day.

Watch the phone operators try to get their heads around this one over the next 12 months. You can be assured that they'll be pretty puzzled. And as for the Wi-Fi hotspot providers, well, they're going to be completely baffled.

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