The iPhone is a fantastic device that revolutionizes how you communicate, consume media, and surf the mobile web. But one thing it doesn’t do, at least out of the box, is let you delve into instant messaging on the go. Your only option is to use text messaging on your carrier’s network, which can quickly become costly and doesn’t give the instant gratification of an IM client or chat room.

But there are alternatives to handing over your hard-earned cash to your phone company. If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, there are plenty of instant messaging clients, as well as IRC, Twitter and even VoIP programs that, coupled with a strong Wi-Fi connections, can extend the reach of the iPhone far past the limits imposed by wireless carriers. If you're the patient sort, you can just wait until July 11 and see what the iTunes App Store has in the way of chat clients.

An instant messaging client for a jailbroken iPhone, Apollo, is a multi-platform client that signs you onto AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Google accounts. AOL showed off its AIM client for the iPhone at the iPhone SDK road map event, so that might be ready on July 11. Just don't don't hold your breath, AOL is notorious for late shipping OS X versions of their software. 

But you aren’t restricted to IM for chat on the iPhone. Colloquy, who has made their reputation with an excellent desktop IRC client,  will bring the same functionality to the iPhone with a great IRC solution that supports multiple chat rooms and keeps a running tab on how many messages are waiting for you when you aren’t using the program. And don’t forget Twitter, which can be a great way to keep up with friends and announce your current activities. Twitter can be somewhat unreliable and was originally intended as a “microblogging” platform, but over time users have morphed the service into a quasi-chat application. There are several iPhone apps to view Twitter updates, but the best one is Twinkle, which not only has a clean interface and smart controls, but also taps into the iPhone’s location awareness capabilities, showing you Twitter updates from other nearby Twinkle users. Add the ability to tag Twitter posts with photos and you’ve got a winning application. You can also use Mobile Twitter, but Twinkle has the same functionality and additional features, so it all comes down to personal taste.

Perhaps the coolest app to come out for the iPhone is Fring, which purports to bring VoIP capabilities to the phone. You can access your Skype contacts and other IM services with the app, but as of yet the VoIP features are flaky at best. The installation process on a jailbroken iPhone is also complicated, and the program definitely feels "beta." Still, Fring has great potential and is definitely an app worth watching for in the App Store.

But what if you haven’t hacked your phone to run third party apps or the App Store doesn't have what you need? There are still plenty of web applications available that provide a viable alternative to text messaging. Google recently introduced an iPhone and iPod touch version of their Google Talk instant messaging system, which runs within Safari and has been optimized to emulate the Gtalk experience as closely as possible on a mobile device. If your friends list spans across many platforms, you can also take advantage of Meebo’s iPhone-format chat portal. Meebo, which made its name as an IM solution on browsers (and the chat solution of choice for desk bound office workers) a couple of years ago, covers most of the major chat protocols. The web interface makes for a slightly slower response time, but features like keeping the keyboard active while chatting and tight integration with existing desktop Meebo accounts make it one of the best IM solutions on the iPhone.

Twitter users also have a surfeit of options using web-based interfaces. Besides Twitter’s own iPhone interface, there’s Hahlo, as well as PocketTweets, iTweet and many other gateways to the Twitterverse.

No matter which solution you opt for, the end result will be a cheaper phone bill and the knowledge that you’ve beat "The Man," if only just a little bit. And that’s certainly worth a little extra effort, right?