This time next year you could be sending texts from your landline telephone - if the service providers are convinced you will still make as many voice calls.

This week, fixed line telecommunications companies, including BT and Cable and Wireless, have been encouraged by industry consultants Frost and Sulivan to install SMS (text) messaging on ordinary subscriber lines.

However, the future of landline texts still looks uncertain.

According to figures from the GSM Association (Global System for Mobile Communication), SMS messaging generated about $36 billion in revenue for mobile operators last year and SMS usage has increased more than 450 per cent since last summer.

Now Frost and Sullivan wants the fixed-line operators to jump on the SMS bandwagon.

Analyst Nathan Budd said: "By generating only a small percentage of this traffic, fixed SMS still has the potential to yield substantial revenue for operators."

According to Frost and Sulivan, if just one per cent of the SMS market could be channelled through landline installations, then the whole process would be cost effective for the landline operator.

There are already a few phones offering fixed-to-mobile SMS.

Amstrad's fixed-line em@iler plus device carries this feature but currently as a "send only" function.

The future looks rather exciting for the fixed-line firms, as more people are drawn to the idea of drawing leisure and business content via SMS messages.

Content-driven services are set to be the next big seller for the mobile phone industry and there is no reason why the fixed line companies shouldn't have a large slice of that pie too.

Leading UK players are already starting to talk about content driven premium rate services (both SMS, internet and voice) and they are more than capable of making the technology work.

Unfortunately, there are some serious obstacles for fixed-line firms to overcome.

If text messages are going to take off for fixed-line users, then each person with access to the phone will require their own mailbox. Not impossible but certainly not freely available right now.

The existing SMS user base is generally happy with the service and is showing a great deal of loyalty to the product.

With an installed mobile phone base serving about 80 per cent of the population in some European countries it may be hard for the fixed-line firms to capture even one per cent of the business with a new offering.

The reason for this is that mobile operators like O2 have developed customer loyalty incentives that really work. These include free text bundles that are so attractive the user feels disinclined to change.

Future offerings based on richer messaging formats such as MMS may be the way forward. MMS is a new technology that allows users to send pictures, text or voice via their mobile and is much cheaper than the existing SMS service.

Industry analysts only expect to see a significant impact from MMS when MMS-capable handsets appear in the mid-to-lower price range. This should be sometime this year but at present few people are making predictions.

Perhaps the largest and most significant challenge facing supporters of fixed-line SMS messaging is the simple fact that people who use texts will probably make fewer voice calls.

The fixed-line telephone service providers recognised this from the outset and could now choose to avoid SMS altogether and make more money.