Get-rich-quick schemes, explicit pornography, urgent appeals for help from Nigerian colonels. Coming soon to a cell phone near you?

The bulk spam that now accounts for as much as three-quarters of all e-mail traffic could soon insinuate its way into movie theaters, subways and anywhere else Americans take their cell phones, experts said at a forum on spam on Thursday.

Text-messaging services on newer cell phones could enable spammers to reach a tempting new audience, conference panelists said.

Federal law prohibits most telemarketers from dialing cell phones, but no such regulations prevent spammers from sending messages to addresses like 2025551212@cellphonecarrier.com. Because many text services carry a per-message charge, costs to consumers could mount quickly.

Text messaging has yet to catch on widely in the United States, since carriers until recently had not agreed on an industry-wide standard. One out of five cell-phone customers now pay between $3 and $20 per month for the feature, but others may be reluctant to sign up if wireless spam becomes common, phone-company officials said.

"It's going to be a problem for us," said Andrea Blander, corporate counsel for AT&T Wireless Services.

Wireless spam is already a problem in Japan, where text messaging has been a popular feature of cell-phone service for years, said an official with NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese telecommunications giant.

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Wired