In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or 300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as 1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS 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, the messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.[3] With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Télécom, he developed a proposal 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. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS is an integral part of SS7 - (see Wikipedia: Signalling_System_No._7).[6] Here it is a "state" with a 160 character data, coded in the ITU-T "T.56" text format, that has "sequence lead in" to determine different language codes, and can have special character codes that allows e.g. simple graphs to be sent as text. This was part of ISDN ( See Wikipedia: Integrated Services Digital Network) and since GSM is based on this, made its way to the mobile phone. Messages could be sent and received on ISDN phones, and these can send SMS to any GSM phone. The possibility of doing something is one thing, getting someone to do it another, but systems existed from 1988 that sent SMS messages to mobile phones (see Wikipedia: ND-NOTIS).
SMS messaging was commercially used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[7] (now Airwide Solutions),[8] used a personal computer to send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[9][10] who was at a party in Newbury, 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. That means that the message goes from one handset - on the signalling band (so you can receive an SMS while you talk), and this is encrypted. It is received by the operator´s main switch (MSC and HLR/VLR) and encoded again for the destination handset. The encryption on the GSM mobile network match military specifications, and applications can use SMS on the mobile network to encrypt and decipher messages. E.g. an MMS is a message that does not have the limitations of the SMS in number of character, can be any length, but is sent as an SMS with a reference to where in the network the MMS is held, and can be downloaded from. The operator will usually also encrypt the MMS, and the encryption keys are in the SMS.
GSM was not allowed in the United States and the radio frequencies was blocked and awarded to US "Carriers" to use US technology. Hence there is no "development" in the US in mobile messaging service. The GSM in the US had to use a frequency allocated for private communication services (PCS) - what the ITU frequency regime had blocked for DECT - Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephony - 1000 feet range picocell, but survived.
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, 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 licenses. 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 call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt Schmoke in Baltimore.[11]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 message per GSM customer per month.[12] One factor in the slow take-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 changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other operators. Over 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, not 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 Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[13]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the population use SMS. The European 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 service by mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by subscriber.
Patrick Abboud
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