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It's no longer the telephone companies' dirty little secret: Cellphones are the newest sex toys.

Instead of playing coy by promoting their technological innovations, cellphone makers have embraced what they call the "textual revolution" and are actively selling their short-message service (SMS) as a sex aid.

Many cellphone companies have researched the market, and have been releasing their findings dressed up as Valentine's Day trivia: That texting, as an integral part of sex life, is hot, hot, hot.

Virgin Mobile Canada recently asked TV sex kitten Pamela Anderson to write a book called The Joy of Text, to be sold in bookstores and given away with a cellphone kit that Virgin calls its "Pleasure Pack." In it, Ms. Anderson talks about "textual intercourse" and offers Canadians advice on "how to spice up their text lives."

Vonage Canada breathlessly reported the other day that there are great advantages to text sex. About a third of their text sex users said they liked not having to get dressed up for a date; about one in five said they liked to do other things while exchanging moist messages, and one in 10 said it was because they didn't have to take precautions.

"The days of calling someone to ask them out on a date or sending a Valentine's Day card are so yesterday," reports Virgin Mobile Canada marketer Nathan Rosenberg.

Sex texting is even less "real" than its elder cousin, phone sex, which has reached such universal levels that more than half of Canadians confessed to Vonage that they engage in phone sex.

Rhonda, a 20-something professional in Toronto, says that sex texting adds a whole new dimension to dating. "It's a masked confidence. There's no accountability, because you're not seeing a reaction.

"It works on two levels, before a relationship and during one," she adds. "You can use it to advance a relationship, and you can use it during a relationship - just to show someone you're always thinking about them."

Messaging can get very graphic, she says, detailing clothing or what one is going to do with a tongue. And from the male point of view, she says, seduction is often the intent: "If you do it enough," she says, "maybe you'll get in."

Women initiate sex texting as often as men do, she says, but there's a fine line between how the two sexes react. Most women mistrust men who rely too much on texting, because it shows a lack of respect. A woman might enjoy the heat of hot text, but will not agree to a date unless it's made when a man actually calls and asks.

Because it does not happen in real time, texting can also work both for and against people communicating that way. Long silences may or may not be meaningful, and responses tend to be a little more considered before being written, so it takes a lot of intuition to gauge the effectiveness of the message.

Sex texting starts just after high school, says Vonage Canada's marketing director Patti Jordan, when kids leave for different colleges. "Long-distance relationships have become unavoidable as more people relocate to attend post-secondary school and to take new jobs," she says.

The telephone — voice as well as texting — becomes a way of maintaining those relationships.

"We're just happy to be able to do our part to help keep relationships healthy and happy without breaking the bank, but what people say and do during their conversations is really none of our business," she adds coyly.

On one thing all marketers can agree on is that sex texting is most popular among people from their late teens to their early 30s, one of the most desirable demographics for any product. That realization, however, comes with a dark cloud: The arrival of unwanted and as-yet unregulated advertising via SMS. Clickatell, a U.S.-based SMS text messaging company, is set to release a major study next week (Feb. 21) called Targeting with Texting, advising industry on how to reach that market.

Canadians have yet to be deluged with SMS advertising, but it has become so prevalent in the United States — where you actually end up bearing some of the cost of receiving such messages — that people who can't afford to pay simply turn the SMS feature off.

"It became more trouble than it was worth," says Mila, a university student in Chicago.

The telephone companies jumped on the texting bandwagon four years ago, when the four major carriers in Canada agreed to allow SMS messaging between cellphones subscribing to different service providers, something they couldn't do before.

Today, Canadians are sending more than two billion text messages a year, Virgin's Rosenberg says. But we're still pikers in that regard; Peter Baker of The Dating Channel in England says that the British passed the 13 billion-per-year SMS mark in 2001. And Mr. Baker's survey found that two in five cellphone users say they would rather give up chocolate and one in 10 are willing to live without TV rather than lose their ability to text.

Sex texting is also subtler than the marketers can describe. For instance, Rhonda says, it's permissible to text someone at 3 a.m., but not to phone. At that hour, it's almost always about sex, she says. But if the sex texting is from someone she doesn't like or from someone with whom she no longer has a relationship, Rhonda says it crosses the line, and becomes irritating.

Is it like stalking, or harassment?

No, she says right away. "It's just annoying, it's junk."

She responds by not responding, and doesn't feel threatened by it. A stalker, she says, is usually a stranger and there will likely be a threat involved, and you can block the sender's phone number anyway. But sex texting almost always involves someone you know.

Depending on the culture, sex texting can be a liberating experience or a crime, too. Italians and Singaporeans alike have taken to sex texting in a big way, reports a website called Textually.org, and almost 90 per cent in both countries cited messages as proof of infidelity — and text messages have become admissible as evidence in divorce courts.

But is it morally wrong? While most Canadians appear to regard sex texting as fun, The Independent newspaper in London reported on a study that concluded sending flirtatious e-mail or phone texts behind a partner's back can be just as damaging as a real-life affair.

After all, most conservative religions have strictures against the intent to sin, similar to the sin of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who once confessed famously to having "lusted in my heart." Similarly for sex texters, it can be sinful to having lusted in your thumbs.

Sober minds attending the annual British Psychological Society conference in London were told that "a cyber-relationship is viewed as a serious infidelity by both men and women." That happened shortly after the British media had a field day with the overtly sexual messages intercepted between soccer star David Beckham and his former personal assistant Rebecca Loos, which in 2004 outraged a British public still mooning over Beckham's marriage to former Spice Girl Victoria Adams. Beckham denied infidelity, but he was condemned in the court of public opinion.

The Beckham story shows the dark of sex texting, which in cases where there is no real relationship, it suggests there might very well become one.

When that happens, Rhonda says, "It becomes a New Age booty call."