Yahoo! today announced the ability to send free text messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile phone numbers.

The new email-to-phone connection is one of the features the Internet media giant plans to add as it makes available to the more than 250 million Yahoo Mail users a new version of the world's most popular email program in coming weeks.

The new Yahoo! Mail enables people to select how they want to communicate with their online contacts: via email, instant message or text message to a mobile phone number. With the introduction of this text messaging feature, which is built on Yahoo!'s IM platform, people can now choose to send free text messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile numbers in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines in real-time without leaving the Web mail experience. The feature is seamlessly incorporated into the new Yahoo! Mail, and is as easy as entering a mobile phone number, typing a text message and hitting send.

The new Yahoo! Mail also enables users to connect in real-time to their contacts within Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger. This instant messaging interoperability connects users of one of the world's largest Web mail services with the world's largest combined IM community and facilitates quick chat conversations within the Yahoo! Mail interface. People can also easily convert their e-mail messages into IM chats or switch to a text message dialogue with the click of a button, when friends come online or go mobile, and vice-versa.

A co-branded version of the new Yahoo! Mail will also be available in the fall to customers using the following broadband Internet services: AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, Verizon Yahoo! and Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet. The new Yahoo! Mail will be available this fall to Yahoo! Small Business Mail users as well.