Short Messaging System

The short messaging system (SMS), also known at times as “short message service,” is a two-way communications technology that allows brief written messages to be sent to and from cellular phones. The system is wildly popular in countries such as the United Kingdom, Finland, and the Philippines, especially among teenagers. It allows alphanumeric email-like messages to be sent between mobile-phone handsets. Users write their messages by tapping them out on their cell phone's keypads, sending them in exactly the same way that they make phone calls. In effect, SMS users' phone numbers are their email addresses.

SMS messages can be up to 160 characters long if users write in the Latin alphabet; they are limited to 70 characters when languages such as Arabic and Chinese are being used. The system was created in the early 1990s as part of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Phase 1 standard, and is supported by the Interim Standard 41C (IS-41C) signaling protocol. According to the GSM Association, the first short message reportedly was sent from a personal computer to a mobile phone over the U.K.'s Vodafone GSM network in December 1992. The first commercial service was launched in 1994.

Incompatible cellular networks have hobbled the adoption of SMS communications in the United States, where devices like the Blackberry two-way pager and PC-based instant-messaging platforms such as ICQ and America Online's Instant Messenger (AIM) have proven much more popular. In Europe, too, the SMS service was slow to take off. It was marketed in the early 1990s as a way for business people to keep in contact when on the road or away from phones, but most people rejected SMS because it is difficult to use. It requires users to tap numbers on the phone keypad that correspond to various characters in the alphabet, which can be cumbersome. For instance, due to the way that letters on a keypad are arranged and [Page 409]grouped, one would have to tap the keypad 14 times to spell out the name “Fritz.” Nonetheless, in 1999, SMS' fortunes began to turn around dramatically in Europe, where residents have relied on digital cellular phones for years. SMS has also achieved great success in Asia. In both cases, it has been largely a young person's phenomenon.

In October 2001, a Malaysian woman receives notice of her traffic summons via SMS. (© AFP/CORBIS)

In a January 2001 presentation at the GSM Association's Mobile Messaging Forum in London, Mobile Lifestreams Ltd. business development director Ben Wood outlined the rapid growth of SMS services, and projected possible directions that the services might take. That presentation, which is online at the GSM Association Web site (http://www.gsmworld.com), indicated that one billion SMS messages were sent in Europe during March 1999; by August 2000, there were six billion messages a month exchanged on the continent. The GSM Association later released numbers indicating that by the end of May 2001, 13 billion messages a month were being carried worldwide using SMS, with nearly 50 billion messages sent in the first three months of the year. GSM Association estimates also indicated that, by the beginning of 2001, SMS users were sending and receiving nearly 35 messages a month on average. The IDC research firm estimated that, in Western Europe alone, 57.3 billion messages were sent by 82 million subscribers in 2001.

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