Clickatell sells a mobile messaging service to enterprises and has more than 6,000 customers, including BP, Shell, Oracle and Deloitte, as well as the largest grouping of small business using text messaging, said chief executive Pieter de Villiers.

The service is not peer-to-peer, but rather enterprise-to-customer and vice versa. For instance, a bank may text message a customer about access to their online account in order to verify it was indeed the customer’s actions and not fraudulent. Also, package delivery companies could notify customers of imminent delivery and schools and institutions could use the service for emergency services, for example.

Clickatell’s service can be based on an escalation system, whereby users can use a Web interface to select the criteria for their preference for the first, second and third method of getting a message to customers.

A key benefit to enterprises is that the service can work on any mobile device, and not just those that are Java-enabled, de Villiers said. We say to enterprises and businesses that you can’t have device limitations . . . you need to look at the technologies that your entire customer base is enabled with predominantly that is going to be mobile text, he said.

The US text messaging market has been slow compared to Europe, in part because voice calls in the US are relatively inexpensive, he said. Interoperability issues had been a factor, but that has begun changing in the past 18 months, he added.

We’re seeing a lot of pilot studies currently ongoing in the US, he said. We expect the [US] market to explode in the next 12 to 18 months.

The US government currently is trialing its services, he said.

Until now, Clickatell has focused on SMS and text delivery through mobile phones, which worked well in the European and African markets where mobile phone penetration is more than 80%. But the US has just more than 60% of mobile phone penetration.

However, the MultiMode deal gives Clickatell the ability to send messages over various channels, including e-mail, SMS, voice and text. Messages can also be delivered through pagers and as instant messages. Now it’s not just mobile device text messaging it’s really device agnostic and channel agnostic, de Villiers said.

The company also is working on being compatible with future IP communication channels, de Villiers said.

Clickatell claims to be the only pure-play, multi-channel messaging company with an ASP model in the industry. [Rivals] don’t necessarily own the infrastructure components behind their service, or they outsource the delivery, de Villiers said.

But Clickatell does and this gives them end-to-end visibility of the delivery of a message, without having to rely on a third-party that they may otherwise have limited or no control over. The chief competitive advantage for Clickatell is quality of service and lower costs, de Villiers said.

Also, we believe an ASP model creates a low barrier of entry to smaller businesses, he said.

Clickatell’s chief rivals in the SMS space include Verisign, which focuses on the consumer space, de Villiers said.

Multichannel messaging competitors that do target enterprise business include privately held 3n, based in Glendale, California, and EnvoyWorldwide, which is owned by Par3 and based in Bedford, Massachusetts. These two do multichannel messaging but again on other people’s infrastructure, de Villiers said.

Privately held Clickatell, which launched five years ago, can deliver messages worldwide and also to more than 569 mobile operators globally, de Villiers said.

The company, which has fewer than 60 employees and regional offices in Europe, the US and Africa, has been profitable since 2002, de Villiers said.

Having garnered its first round of venture capital financing in 2002, for an undisclosed amount, Clickatell will likely seek another round during the next couple of months, de Villiers said. So we can accelerate the business to make sure we can take on that market share.