Earlier this week, Cingular rolled out Star Services, a simple mechanism to allow its customers to get account information sent to them via SMS. With Star Services, Cingular customers can check their:

• account balance by dialing *BAL# and
• minutes used by dialing *MIN#.

They can also make one time account payments by dialing *PAY#.

I don't know about the need for the last one, but I wish we could get all of the mobile phone carriers in the USA to standardize on *BAL# and *MIN# for quick access to account information. It would help customers avoid larger-than-expected bills, particularly when people share a mobile phone. [ via MobileGadgetNews ]