Verizon to bring text to Latin American carrier

Wireless carrier Verizon said Tuesday that it signed a deal with Telcel, Latin America's largest wireless service provider, to provide its international text messaging service.

The deal expands Verizon's international text messaging service to 28 countries since it came out at the end of 2002.

A spokesperson for Verizon confirmed the deal with Telcel, but refused to divulge financial arrangements.

Verizon customers can send international messages across borders for 10 cents each, while customers of participating carriers will have to shell out 25 cents for sending a message to a Verizon customer. Each message received will be charged at 2 cents irrespective of origin. Verizon customers can also get bundled packages, such as paying $2.99 per month for up to 100 messages, $4.99 per month for 250 messages and $9.99 per month for as many as 1,000 messages sent or received. Messages sent to and from Canada, Puerto Rico and Mexico will be charged the same as domestic messages.

Despite high growth in volume in the recent years, data services account for only 3 percent of overall revenue of wireless carriers in the United States. This is very low, compared with 10 percent to 12 percent in Asian and European markets.

China, Columbia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand and United Kingdom are some of the other countries that Verizon offers global text messaging service to.