Within days, hundreds of different chat channels had been launched in subjects ranging from marketing and soccer teams to erotic news. On the new Nokia 3310 consumer phone, ways of managing text messaging are made available which allow the same text message to be sent to several people and for people to meet each other and to join chat groups and to manage their messaging. In order to fully manage all these features, and allow new chat rooms to be established, it is necessary for a network operator to install the Nokia FriendsTalk platform. USSD is used to provide the dynamic menu structures to allow the text messages to be managed easily. USSD acts as a trigger for sending short messages.
Phones interact with the server using the USSD bearer.
This is important because USSD Phase 2 provides interactive two-way communication possibilities. Nokia has its 6120 with WAP 1.1 for high end users and the 3310 with USSD for consumers. Interestingly, WAP is NOT used for this phone or application.