The council's IT and technology infrastructure team leader, David Carroll, said SMS has proven to be "very effective" in enabling rapid response to infrastructure failures and faults, and therefore has reduced system downtime and service outages.

"Using the newer Windows-based mobile phones, systems engineers can respond to issues received via SMS within about one minute as they are able to use their phone to connect to the faulty system and immediately commence problem diagnosis and repair," Carroll said. "Previously this would have resulted in waiting for a user to report a problem and various escalation processes to be followed resulting in diagnosis starting some hours after the initial fault."

In 2003 the council integrated its e-mail systems with Telstra's OnlineSMS service to provide a "quick and easy" form of communication for office-based staff to pass messages to workers who are located mainly in the field, working from a mobile phone.

Along with the growing enterprise acceptance of SMS has come a host of service providers offering SMS integration solutions.

Raef Akehurst, managing director of Beep Interactive, creator of SMS service smsGeezer, said compelling business applications for SMS stem from some of the unique characteristics, including cost, static mobile numbers, and the message being almost instantly received and read, as opposed to possible delays with an e-mail or fax.