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Monday, December 3, 2012

The SMS text message is 20 years old today

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Short Message Service used for sending 160-character messages via mobile phone networks. The first official SMS message was sent on this day in 1992, when an Sema Group engineer named Neil Papworth sent a text message from a computer to the Orbitel 901 mobile phone being used by Richard Jarvis of Vodafone UK. The message simply said ‘Merry Christmas’.

SMS had been devised some years earlier; Finnish engineer Matti Makkonen is credited with creating the initial concept in 1984.

TeliaSonera Sweden was the first network to offer a commercial service that took advantage of SMS, using it for voicemail notifications in 1993, while Radiolinja Finland (now known as Elisa) launched the first commercial person-to-person SMS service later that year.

Some countries are now seeing SMS traffic and revenue both falling, although SMS traffic is still increasing globally, according to figures from Informa Telecoms & Media. The research company forecasts that global SMS traffic will reach 6.7 trillion messages this year, a year-on-year increase of 13.6% from 2011. By 2016, the annual global SMS figure is expected to total 9.4 trillion messages, generating $127 billion (£79 billion) in revenue.

Global, SMS per subscriber per month, 2002-2011

[Informa Telecoms & Media blog]

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Opinion Articles

We interview Geoff Love of Esendex about business SMS messaging

Mark Bridge writes:

Nottingham-based Esendex Limited has been supporting businesses with messaging services for over ten years. Yet with SMS messaging celebrating its 20th birthday in the UK this year, it would be easy to think the no-nonsense short message is now being threatened by social networking, mobile email and picture messages.

That’s not the case, explained Geoff Love, Chief Commercial Officer of Esendex.

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