Way to work around T-Mo US charge for using AIM.

[Guest jcostantino]

I activated the 400 SMS package today and figured I would experiment a little. It seems as though TMO's IM client can keep track of how many messages are sent/received and a different program like AgileMessager bypasses the ticker completely!

In my informal testing, I sent about 25 IMs back and forth with a couple people and then sent and received a SMS. Dialing #MSG# shows only two used out of 400!

The theory I have is that they use a customized version of their IM client that either connects to an internal IM server or does some sort of other kind of IM tracking.

Wether or not they can "catch you" for circumventing their accounting system for IM remains to be seen but at least for casual use I'm sure they wouldn't care much.

I don't know if this has been brought up before or not but I figure I might drop a little note on my observations.