(including protocol overhead), more than 350 of these messages per minute can be

transmitted at the same data rate as a usual voice call (9 kbit/s). There are a
lso free SMS services available, which are often sponsored and allow sending SMS
from a PC connected to the internet.
Mobile service providers in New Zealand, such as Vodafone and S (Short Messaging
Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he was working for Deutsche
Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random sentences
and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, th
e messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one co
uld type via text.[3] With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a pro
posal for the GSM group meeting in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical
solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the leadership of Finn Trosby. I
t was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian Harris (see
Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth
, a 22-year-old test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions
),[7] used a personal computer to send the text message "Merry Christmas" via th
e Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8][9] who was at a party in Ne
wbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.
Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to
another mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial p
erson-to-person SMS text messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic c
ompetitor, Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text mess
aging in 1995 and the two networks offered cross-network SMS functionality, Finl
and became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered as a competitiv
e as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American P
ersonal Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommu
nications Venture, a partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV compan
ies, owned 49 percent of APC. The Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at
a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7 billion in 2005 for PCS lice
nses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and launched service
on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial ca
ll to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C
. to Mayor Kurt Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communica
tions.[11] Telecom NZ, provide up to 2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month. User
s on these plans send on average 1500 SMS messages every month.
Text messaging has become so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers a
re now jumping into the text messaging business. Services that provide bulk text
message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and ad
vertisers to reach a group of opt-in subscribers quickly.
Research suggests that Internet-based
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] Th
e first messages over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and
London. Seven million words or 300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[ci
tation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent by radio using via Radi
otelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as 197
1 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SM
Omnipoint's George Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commerc
ial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a
team that introduced texting as a commercial service in New York City in Novemb
er 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's Central
Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "Geor
ge are you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 2
0, 1996. Omnipoint soon offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest
of the world.[15] The tipping point for text messaging was the 1998 marketing pl
an conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use texting as the primary wa
y to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas instead of c

alling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primar
y means of contact between two or more people not in their home countries.[17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on ave
rage only 0.4 message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow tak
e-up of SMS was that operators were slow to set up charging systems, especially
for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud, which was possible by chan
ging SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other operators. O
ver time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the
SMSC and by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users
sending messages through it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, no
t all text messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations
of the concept include J-Phone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in J
apan. E-mail messaging from phones, as popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and th
e RIM BlackBerry, also typically use standard mail protocols such as SMTP over T
CP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of a
ll mobile phone users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscri
bers, at end of 2007 being active users of the Short Message Service. In countri
es such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the population use SMS. The E
uropean average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up with over
60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the servic
e by mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts
sent per day by subscriber.
Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a subst
itute for voice calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or u
ndesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of ap
pliances. It is widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built o
wn systems to control (some of) their appliances via SMS.[20][21] Other methods
such as group messaging, which was patented in 2012 by the GM of Andrew Ferry, D
evin Peterson, Justin Cowart, Ian Ainsworth, Patrick Messinger, Jacob Delk, Jack
Grande, Austin Hughes, Brendan Blake, and Brooks Brasher are used to involve mo
re than two people into a text messaging conversation[citation needed].
A Flash SMS is a type[22] of text message that appears directly on the main scre
en without user interaction and is not automatically stored in the inbox. It can
be useful in cases such as an emergency (e.g. fire alarm) or confidentiality (e
.g. one-time password).[23]
Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world.
SMS is particularly popular in Europe, Asia (excluding Japan; see below), United
States, Australia and New Zealand and is also gaining influence in Africa. Popu
larity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term texting (used as a verb me
aning the act of mobile phone users sending short messages back and forth) has e
ntered the common lexicon. Young Asians consider SMS as the most popular mobile
phone application.[24] Fifty percent of American teens send fifty text messages
or more per day, making it their most frequent form of communication.[25]
In China, SMS is very popular and has brought service providers significant prof
it (18 billion short messages were sent in 2001).[26] It is a very influential a
nd powerful tool in the Philippines, where the average user sends 10 12 text messa
ges a day. The Philippines alone sends on average over 1 billion text messages a
day,[27] more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, an
d even China and India. SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often e
xchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news,
cricket scores updates, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking se
rvices on SMS.
Texting became popular in the Philippines in 1998. In 2001, text messaging playe
d an important role in deposing former Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Simi
larly, in 2008, text messaging played a primary role in the implication of forme
r Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in an SMS sex scandal.[28]

Short messages are particularly popular among young urbanites. In many markets,
the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia, a message typical
ly costs between A$0.20 and $0.25 to send (some prepaid services charge $0.01 be
tween their own phones), compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere betwe
en $0.40 and $2.00 per minute (commonly charged in half-minute blocks). The serv
ice is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of on
ly 190 bytes mobile messaging will have grown to equal the popularity of SMS in
2013, with nearly 10 trillion messages being sent through each technology.[29][
30] Services such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Viber have led to a declin
e in the use of SMS in parts of the world.