SMS
Messaging With SMS (text message)
SMS stands for Short Messaging Service or Silent Messaging Service. It is what is more commonly referred to as text messaging and is part of the GSM standard communication protocols that enables the exchange of short text messages between mobile phones.
Of all mobile phone applications, SMS is the most popular and widely used on the planet with over 2.4 billion active mobile phone users engaged in sending and receiving text messages at any given time worldwide. The simplicity of text messaging to effectively communicate with just about anyone with a mobile phone has made the protocol available not only confined in 2G GSM networks but in 3G as well.
There have been other messaging protocols like the RIM BlackBerry that used the SMTP format over TCP/IP, J-Phone’s Skymail and NTT Docomo’s Short Mail in Japan. But it wasn’t until the popularity of mobile phones became a reality that SMS caught on as the easiest and most accessible form of communication on the planet. This facility has sounded the death knell for the once popular pager services that promptly lost its appeal when mobile phones became more accessible.
SMS Today
SMS is not expected to lose its widespread appeal anytime soon. Even old folks and non computer-savvy people, as well as early grade schoolers can easily adopt to the texting facilities on even the crudest mobile handset. For most people, texting has replaced voice calls as it can be cheaper to text than to call on the mobile networks.
The SMS services came with the GSM standards for 2G. It is limited to 160 characters including spaces. Early handsets had to split long messages to send them in parts.
Business-wise, SMS is a real cash cow that underwrites mobile carrier operations. In 2008 alone, SMS generated about ₤50 billion in revenues globally with an average global price of just ₤0.06 per text message while costing carriers almost nothing as their GSM networks are already considered as sunk-cost that are there, whether you use them or not. Different mobile phone networks interconnect with other with just about ₤0.03 per text message interconnected.
