Texters charged for the síneadh fada

celticbest

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0719/breaking4.html

What happens in other Countries that use symbols above there letters in Europe like :

Swedish http://www.google.ie/imgres?q=swedish+alphabet&um=1&hl=en&safe=active&biw=1116&bih=615&tbm=isch&tbnid=QSF-BFg4VLMyrM:&imgrefurl=http://www.styleathome.com/blog/2009/11/19/art-for-typography-junkies/&docid=lx_A23NOPh0blM&imgurl=http://www.styleathome.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ikeabet.jpg&w=356&h=466&ei=POsHUPz1FvOM0wXUhvTHBA&zoom=1

Spanish http://www.google.ie/imgres?q=spanish+alphabet&um=1&hl=en&safe=active&biw=1116&bih=615&tbm=isch&tbnid=06HkArEOVXrS1M:&imgrefurl=http://www.123teachme.com/learn_spanish/spanish_alphabet&docid=PDFARXxHfwB-MM&imgurl=http://static1.123teachme.com/cms_images/landing/spanish_alphabet_410x200.jpg&w=410&h=200&ei=busHUIy6Boap0AWGvanOBA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=84&vpy=300&dur=1976&hovh=157&hovw=322&tx=176&ty=85&sig=103666570452968254566&page=1&tbnh=85&tbnw=174&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0,i:89

Do they get charged for 3 texts instead of one?

Kensington

celticbest wrote:

What happens in other Countries that use symbols above there letters in Europe like

The default GSM character encoding set includes characters such as à.
It does not include the opposing accent á as used in Irish.

To send á requires switching to another extended GSM alphabet encoding scheme which does include all of the Irish accents but in doing so uses up more data to encode each character so gives you a maximum of 70 characters in a standard SMS, as opposed to the 160 characters you get with the default character set.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38

They could force all new phone handsets sold in this country to adopt an Irish character encoding set, but:
(i) previously sold handsets wouldn't be able to interpret it and you'd end up with garbled texts if you hadn't an "approved" handset
(ii) you can bet the costs associated with adopting the character set would be passed straight onto the retail cost of the phone == more expensive phones
(iii) phones bought/sourced from outside the Republic of Ireland would be exempt (and again, wouldn't be able to interpret the character set so garbled texts)

bogman

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/28425-one-fada-for-the-price-of/

Another article here, bit of a joke really

Texts of up to 70 characters won’t result in extra charges no matter how many fadas they contain, but any higher – with even a single fada – can result in a charge equivalent to sending three text messages.

Some countries regulations have been put in place to stop this, like in Turkey where mobile phone manufacturers and operators cannot enter the market unless they allow these characters to be used freely.

Odaise Gaelach

In fairness, the alphabet was a standard from back in 1986 when no one - not even the team behind it - thought that texting would be as popular or as global as it is now. Initially it was a trade-off between the size of the alphabet and how many characters could be sent.

"We were looking to a cheap implementation," Hillebrand said on the phone from Bonn. "Most of the time, nothing happens on this control link. So, it was free capacity on the system."

Initially, Hillebrand's team could fit only 128 characters into that space, but that didn't seem like nearly enough. With a little tweaking and a decision to cut down the set of possible letters, numbers and symbols that the system could represent, they squeezed out room for another 32 characters.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging.html