WIRELESS WORLD: SMS standing tall - Short messaging service is aptly making the transition from a consumer service to a business solution.

A COUPLE OF pubs in Dublin, Ireland, sending free drink vouchers to their customers using SMS (short messaging service) may not sound like big news, but when you get behind the novelty of it, you discover something far more newsworthy.

For one, the pubs' owners -- the McGowan family, who collected more than 5,000 cell phone numbers from customers to invite them in for a free birthday drink -- saw a 25 percent improvement in response using SMS, compared with the direct mail they had used previously. In addition, the cost of an SMS message is much lower than the cost of postage.

Behind the direct SMS marketing strategy is a Dublin-based company called Saadian …