Mike and I have just worked this out in real-time, so I'll share the results here for the rest of you.
The web page I linked to describes the version of Messenger that comes
with Windows XP. It's moved away from the old (unprofitable)
advertising-based model to a payment-based model.
In versions of Messenger prior to XP, paging was a free service. The
web site I linked to is a little ambiguous about this, but seems to say
that both paging and telephony are provided by net2phone, who charge for
their service.
I'm deferring thinking about this until it's actually time to implement
it. By then, MS may have withdrawn free paging altogether, or Jabber
may have developed a proper SMS gateway. Even if I do take the moral
high-ground (read: chicken out), it's not like this is a closed-source
world, so there's nothing to stop people from releasing a patch which
enables text message support.
- Andrew
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