NEW YORK: Most mobile telephone users in the US have a chance to participate directly in America Rocks the Vote. The Democratic presidential candidate forum takes place on 4 November.
For America Rocks the Vote, CNN enlisted the services of all major carriers and four regional carriers to support text messaging for the presidential forum. The cooperation with the carriers means that about 130 million cellphone users in the US, or 90 per cent of the total market, will have the ability to interact with the broadcast. 
CNN.com senior VP and executive producer Mush Gelman added, "We believe that CNN is the first major news network to integrate such services into its television broadcasts. This will be one of the widest distributions for any text messaging initiative ever run in the United States."
The participating carriers are AT&T Wireless, Alltel, Cincinnati Bell, Cingular, Cricket, Dobson, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile and Verizon. The text messaging service for the presidential forum marks one of CNN's first efforts to highlight its improved CNNtoGO wireless services. CNN relaunched CNNtoGO on 20 October to include text messaging, mobile polling and access to CNN.com's up-to-the-minute news coverage and full-colour images.