Short Message Service (SMS) is a component of the text message service of most telephone, World Wide Web, and mobile phone systems. It uses standardized communication protocols to allow landline/landline or mobile phone devices to exchange short text messages. SMS was the most widely used data application, with an estimated 3.5 billion active users, or around 80% of all mobile phone subscribers, at the end of 2010.
initial development
The SMS concept was developed in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert. GSM is optimized for telephony, since this was identified as its main application. The key idea for SMS was to use this phone-optimized system and carry messages on the signaling paths needed to handle phone traffic during periods when there was no signaling traffic. In this way, unused resources in the system could be used to carry messages at minimal cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages to 128 bytes (later improved to 160 seven-bit characters) so that the messages could fit into existing signaling formats. Based on his personal observations and analysis of typical postcard and Telex message lengths, Hillebrand argued that 160 characters was enough to express most messages succinctly.
early development
The first proposal that started the development of SMS was made by a contribution from Germany and France at the GSM group meeting in February 1985 in Oslo. This proposal was further elaborated in the GSM WP1 Services subgroup (Chair Martine Alvernhe, France Telecom) on the basis of a contribution from Germany. There were also initial discussions in the WP3 subgroup on network issues chaired by Jan Audestad (Telenor). The result was approved by the main GSM group in a June 1985 document that was distributed to the industry. The input documents on SMS had been prepared by Friedhelm Hillebrand (Deutsche Telekom) with contributions from Bernard Ghillebaert (France Telecom). The definition that Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert introduced in GSM required the provision of a service for transmitting alphanumeric messages to mobile users “with recognition capabilities”. The last three words transformed SMS into something far more useful than the mainstream message search that some in GSM might have had in mind.
early implementations
The first SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the UK on December 3, 1992, from Neil Papworth of Sema Group (now Mavenir Systems) using a personal computer to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone using an Orbitel 901 phone. The text of the message was “Merry Christmas.
The first commercial deployment of a Short Message Service Center (SMSC) was done by Aldis with part of Logica (now part of Acision) with Telia (now TeliaSonera) in Sweden in 1993, followed by Fleet Call (now Nextel) in the US. USA, Telenor in Norway[citation needed] and BT Cellnet (now O2 UK)[citation needed] later in 1993. All early installations of SMS Gateways were for network notifications sent to mobile phones, usually to report voicemail messages.
The first commercially sold SMS service was offered to consumers, as a person-to-person text messaging service by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa) in Finland in 1993. Most early GSM mobile phones did not support SMS capability. send SMS text messages. , and Nokia was the only mobile phone manufacturer whose entire line of GSM phones in 1993 supported the sending of SMS text messages by users. According to Matti Makkonen, the inventor of SMS text messaging, Nokia 2010, which was launched in January 1994, was the first mobile phone that supported SMS composition easily.
SMS today
In 2010, 6.1 trillion (6.1 × 1012) SMS text messages were sent. This translates into an average of 193,000 SMS per second. SMS has become a huge commercial industry, earning $114.6 billion globally in 2010. The global average price of an SMS message is US$0.11, while mobile networks charge each other interconnection fees of at least US$0.04 when connected between different telephone networks.
In 2015, the actual cost of sending an SMS in Australia was found to be $0.00016 per SMS.
In 2014, Caktus Group developed the world’s first SMS-based voter registration system in Libya. So far, more than 1.5 million people have registered using that system, giving Libyan voters unprecedented access to the democratic process.
While SMS is still a growing market, traditional SMS is increasingly challenged by alternative messaging services such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Viber available on smartphones with data connections, especially in Western countries where these services are growing in popularity. It has been reported that more than 97% of smartphone owners use alternative messaging services at least once a day. Enterprise SMS messaging, also known as application-to-peer messaging (A2P messaging) or two-way SMS, continues to grow steadily at a rate of 4% per year. SMS enterprise applications are primarily focused on CRM and the delivery of highly targeted service messages such as package delivery alerts, real-time notifications of credit/debit card purchase confirmations to protect against fraud, and confirmations of quotes. Another main source of the increasing volumes of A2P messages are two-step verification processes (alternatively called two-factor authentication) whereby users are given a one-time passcode via SMS and are then asked to enter that access code online to verify your identity. .
