I always thought that SMS is something that would die along with traditional mobile networks. When new standards like WiMax become fully adopted then mobile car

I always thought that SMS is something that would die along with traditional mobile networks. When new standards like WiMax become fully adopted then mobile carriers become obsolete, as do arbitrary protocols like SMS. We end up with everything-over-IP and short text messages become just another way to receive data (with appropriate costs!). Having said that I think that currently SMS is more convenient than email, and perhaps a new short message standard should be considered to replace SMS. There are tradeoffs, though - if we switch to email then I have a way of receiving messages at multiple locations, eg. indexing my conversations on my PC as well as having them pushed to my device. SMS is definitely a stop-gap that will die out when IP reigns supreme.