Patent ID: 8000729

Claim:
A text messaging system for conveying text messages between a sender and a recipient in a wireless carrier network, comprising: a sender mobile handset including manual input for identifying text characters in a message to be sent to the recipient, an audio-band encoder coupled to the manual input for representing the text characters with a keyed modulation stream, wherein the keyed modulation stream is transmitted over a non-signaling channel of the wireless carrier network to a base station, wherein the manual input includes a plurality of text character-associated keys for generating ASCII code, and wherein the audio band encoder converts the ASCII code to a dit-dah code prior to encoding with a keyed modulation; at least one mobile switching center in the wireless carrier network transporting the message between the sender mobile handset and the recipient mobile handset; a demodulator operating on behalf of the recipient for converting the keyed modulation stream to decoded text; and a recipient mobile handset including a display interface and a display for receiving the decoded text and displaying the text characters of the message to the recipient.