East African Business Week

KAMPALA, UGANDA - Google's daily incorporation of Ugandan's and also taking of the communications market seriously seems to be increasing after the search engine last week launched the Gmail-to-SMS service, Uganda's first PC chat to mobile text service, which allows Gmail users in the country to send and receive chat messages - for free - as text messages.
With SMS in Chat, a Gmail user can send a text message from the desktop interface directly to phones via SMS. In return, these contacts may respond to these text messages and the response will appear in the original sender's Gmail interface.
According to a message from Google, the service will eventually support all cellular networks and the standard network text message charges will apply from for a message sent from the phone to the desktop, but SMS in Gmail chat is free from desktop to phone.
The SMS in Chat feature is especially useful if a contact is not available via online chat, as it allows users to form a conversation and to send information from within the chat window directly to the contact's phone screen. But it also works the other way round: You don't need access to a wired PC if you want to send messages to Gmail chat; you can directly send an SMS text message from your phone to a contact's Gmail Chat window.
While announcing the development, Elijah Kitaka Google's Business Development Associate for Uganda confirmed that the service was being launched in Uganda following the successful launches in Senegal, Ghana and Kenya. The service in Uganda is available to customers who are subscribed to Uganda Telecom, Orange and MTN Uganda."We are very proud to be launching SMS in Gmail. SMS in Gmail chat has been specifically designed with the African consumer in mind and will bring a new level of flexibility and mobility to Gmail Chat. Google appreciates the vibrancy of Uganda's ICT sector and has launched this service to make the internet even more useful to Ugandans on a daily basis." He added.
SMS in chat works on the basis that you just type a phone number into the new SMS box from your Gmail account, then key in your message and send it. Contact phone numbers can be stored within the Gmail address book, which allows one to access them anytime they want to send an SMS
SMS in chat is enabled for Gmail users by default depending on one's PC settings; in the event that it is not active in your account, you can activate it for free selecting Settings then Labs and enabling the SMS options and saving the changes.
Every user is automatically given 50 credits which are used to send texts and with every text sent, one credit is deducted. When one receives a reply to their text, they receive 5 credits as 'top up' and the maximum number of credits that one can have at any one given time is 50 credits.