KOI8 and SMS

I thought I had my Russian life covered when I discovered years ago the use of Maschke's Automatic Cyrillic converter. Now, I recently was told that all my text messages overseas are being garbled... What frustration and sadness!!

I typically use my Hotmail account to send SMS messages to the mobile phones of my friends in Russia/Ukraine. I prepare the messages on my PC which is a WinXP machine. When I receive overseas messages, I can run them through the internet Maschke converter quite easily. But, the converter is not available on mobile phones. I have also sent SMS through my phone service on my Pocket PC -- again a Windows based operating system.

How do I conquer this problem so that I can send Cyrillic messages through SMS? Is it the Hotmail servers that create the problem...would switching to Yahoo mail or something else correct the problem? Is it my PC operating systems? Is it simply the USA server network (which is something I cannot control)? Is it my phone service (TMobile)?

I appreciate any thoughts on this....

I send SMS to Russia using www.megafon.ru

I use this link to send to St Pete area: http://www.megafonnw.ru/site/rus/sms

But go to the main page to find the region where you want to send sms's for free...

I use these links to send SMS in Moscow area. 3 leading mobile operators are beeline http://www.beonline.ru/portal/comm/send ... nd_sms.sms
MTS http://sms.mts.ru/cgi-bin/cgi.exe?funct ... d&isFree=1 and megafon http://sms.megafonmoscow.ru

So, there are no solutions other than using a delivery from the web site of the recipient's (or an overseas) phone company?? I don't know if that is feasible from my Pocket PC, especially if I am traveling in an area where I only have a phone connection, and no good internet connection.