Taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones, the U.S. Department of State used SMS to reach citizens worldwide during a speech given by President Obama on Monday from Accra, Ghana.

The U.S. Department of State tapped mobile messaging provider Clickatell to offer African and international/non-U.S. citizens around the world live speech highlights in English or French via SMS. In addition, enrolled participants were able to send their speech comments via text message back to the U.S. Department of State, where selected responses were posted online at http://www.america.gov/ghana_comments.html.

"This program is a ?mobile town hall without boarders' open to all citizens outside the U.S. worldwide, in this case, especially African citizens," said Chuck Drake, executive vice president of marketing for Clickatell, Redwood City, CA. "Text messaging is mobile communication -- delivered anytime, anywhere -- with distribution available to more than 4 billion handsets worldwide.

"The Obama Ghana speech SMS service makes use of this broad reach and instant communications of speech highlights going out ?in real time' to reach local citizens and provides a way for these people to respond immediately via SMS," he said.

"If it were only TV, radio or other forms of traditional media, then some media sources would be in the middle, filtering and interpreting and delaying the message, and there would also be no way to support a 'send in your comments' town-hall style interaction aspect to this using traditional media sources alone."

Sequoia-backed Clickatell specializes in SaaS messaging services and bulk SMS gateway connectivity to small, medium and large enterprises in a variety of vertical markets.

Reaching 775-plus networks in more than 200 countries, Clickatell serves 8,300 customers including BBC, Continental Airlines, CNN, First National Bank, Metropolitan Life, Oracle and Shell.

International/non-U.S. citizens were able to enroll in the Obama SMS speech highlights initiative online at http://www.america.gov/sms.html. Participants could comment during Obama's speech via standard two-way SMS.

In addition to online enrollment, African citizens interested in receiving President Obama's Ghana speech highlights via SMS could enroll directly through their mobile phone by entering a specified mobile service code number, depending on their African country of origin.

Specific mobile codes for enrollment are available at http://www.america.gov/world/africa.html

The U.S. DoS promoted the program locally in Africa on radio stations and in the embassies.
It was promoted on Facebook, Second Life and through PR, getting much local coverage in African newspapers.

Using the mobile channel to remain transparent and accessible, the U.S. Administration is facilitating two-way mobile communications to the African public as well as international/non-U.S. citizens interested in President Obama's Ghana speech.

Unlike existing "push" news mediums like TV and radio, SMS provides for two-way communications, giving the people of the world a voice during momentous events such as these, according to Clickatell.

The SMS messages sent by participants can be viewed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/Ghana-SMSMap.

According to a recent study by Ernst and Young, Africa is the world's fastest growing mobile phone market, having expanded by 49 percent since 2002.

"Working for the U.S. Department of State on this project, Clickatell has the online experience needed to build an online Web SMS registration and support process," Mr. Drake said. "These interested people opted in for this particular speech, it is not meant to be used for future use."