Talk:Short message service/archive1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 iPhone 2 History 3 Clash lyrics 4 Currency 5 Message lengths 5.1 Segment limit practical maximum 6 US useage 7 UK TV Shows 8 Technical details 9 SMS? 10 Clarification 10.1 US Usage figures 10.2 Unclear statement 10.3 Malaysian\ Islamic law 11 Payment 12 Mandarin Chinese 13 UK Popularity 14 History 15 Active editors: Have you thought of writing... 16 I know we're not a how-to, but... 17 SMS-CB 18 Flash SMS 19 Message Vista 20 US Usage 21 wap push 22 Finnish paragraph in US section 23 Technical Section again 24 Source of first commercial message information 25 Guinness World Record 26 Posted to the bottom 27 Cultural Speculation 28 SMS across networks? 29 Needs a re-write... 30 This article is extremely GSM-biased. 31 Questions 32 Rewrite of technical section 33 "Citation needed" in first paragraph 34 Requested move 34.1 Survey 35 New York ban

iPhone

I've just removed the iPhone image - the iPhone isn't out yet, so it's not a good example of how people use the SMS platform. A good image should be illustrative - not showing a product that isn't even out and may yet change. Also, the image is copyrighted - we can claim fair use if we are using it "to illustrate the work or product being discussed", but we're not - this is not an iPhone or Apple article - it's an SMS article, and anyone can generate a free (as in speach) image of a phone using SMS Tompagenet 11:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

History

The 'no one person/organisation invented SMS' line is a cop-out. Could we have more details about the first phone manufacturer to support text messaging, first network to carry it. Does anyone own any patents? Which country was it first ontroduced in. There are some more useful details that could complete this section.

Actually, SMS was invented by just one person, in 1982-1983 by a Finn called Matti Makkonen, who brought the idea to Nordic mobile phone workgroup, which presented it in 1984 in GSM WP3. (References: Finnish wikipedia, http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekstiviesti and pretty much any web site)

---

To the SMS history of GSM:

In WP3: GSM WP3 (working party responsible for network and architecture) was established March 1984 along with the working parties for services (WP1) and radio aspects (WP2). Neither the chairman (Norwegian) nor the secretary (French) of WP3 can recall any input document on SMS that year. The archives of the documents are not complete, but the minutes of the meetings are and thereby the list of documents and their corresponding subjects, as well as the discussion on each document.

The earliest GSM documents containing anything on SMS are GSM 19/85 and GSM 28/85 (from 1985), which were documents submitted to the main group of GSM. Both derive from joint French-German discussions and collaboration. The content of GSM 28/85 from there on takes the form of the list of services for GSM, and was after a while split into the original versions of specification GSM 02.02 (GSM bearer services) and GSM 02.03 (GSM tele services). When IDEG (Implementation of Data and Telematics Expert Group) was established in May 1987, the current version of 02.03 was by the chairman (German) declared the starting fundament of the specification of SMS, which was done in that group.

To the history of the Finnish creationists:

In 2002, I received a call from a journalist of Helsingin Sanomat, who was interested if I could verify that “Matti Makkonen was the father of SMS”. When I said that I could not, she immediately lost the interest in the SMS history and hang up.

In early 2006, I was notified that Wikipedia had come forward with Matti Makkonen as the father of SMS. This was real news. Matti Makkonen had participated in the work on NMT, but I didn’t think that he was much involved in GSM (key persons in GSM later confirmed that my anticipation was correct), and I was pretty sure that he never showed his face in IDEG / WP4 (up to 1990), neither did anyone else from the Finnish telco.

In summer 2006, I was notified that Makkonen had been subject to interviews in major newspapers in the Nordic countries. In the one of them that I checked, Makkonen bluntly steps forward as the father and tells the story of how SMS was invented: He and his colleagues were enjoying a pizza and some beers in the evening of Copenhagen after a long and exhausting day at an NMT meeting. Suddenly, Matti bends over and utters: “It should be possible to send text messages on the signalling channel of NMT”. Full stop. The journalist wraps up: Due to a crowded agenda of the NMT meeting, it was not time to submit the crucial idea at that meeting. The interview says nothing about what happened at any subsequent meetings – but still: the idea is born.

To the future of Wikipedia:

When I asked the journalist of the interview above about how he become aware of “the father of SMS”, he answered: “I googled ‘SMS history’, and the entry of Makkonen in Wikipedia popped up”. This is how it works – if the many readers / editors of Wikipedia do not draw a line to nonsense and chauvinistic lobbyism. Some German and French pioneers were probably the closest to grab the fatherhood, if any. When they have not done so, it is because they acknowledge the GSM development as the fabulous _team_ work that it was – the most successful collaboration of Europe in modern times. The statement on one common achievement is definitely no cop-out.

---

Clash lyrics

Re: Clash lyrics text mistaken for terrorist plot: The the sun articlepreviously linked to has been archived, needing a password to access. This article seems to have indicated that the police monitor text messages. A Guardian article covering the same incident indicates that the text message was sent to the wrong number and the recipient reported it to the police.

Previous text:

• In June 2004, a British punk rock fan was questioned by police, who had intercepted a text message containing lyrics from "Tommy Gun" by The Clash - confirming that text messages are being monitored for terrorist activity. 1

Currency

WRT the recent edit, it just seems to me that when discussing an Australian example of relative pricing, it seems odd to be using USD. --Robert Merkel 03:30 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

Somebody Americanised (US-ised) it for no good reason. (The point is the ratio, not the actual values.) Reverted. Andy G 22:45 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Message lengths

"To avoid the even shorter message lengths available when using Cyrillic letters, some Russians use the Latin alphabet for their own language." - this doesn't seem to make any sense. Why would *users* want to *avoid* shorter message lengths? Users *like* short messages. Anyone know what the intended sense is? --AW

You get 160 character messages in the Latin alphabet, but only 70 in cyrillics. So they don't use cyrillics. Sorry I wasn't very clear; I've tried re-wording to "limited message lengths". Andy G 00:23 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Segment limit practical maximum

The technical details section states "3 to 4 segment messages are the practical maximum". While this may have been true several years ago, it is no longer... people routinely send 6-segment messages, which can be sent by most (if not all) Nokia mobile phones on the market now, as well as many other brands - some of which allow 8-segment messages (e.g. Orange SPV). I am therefore changing the quoted part of the sentence to read "6 to 8 segment messages are the practical maximum", since people send such messages today without many reported problems. --Buyoof 00:20, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

US useage

Why is SMS relatively less used in the United States? Den fjättrade ankan 22:05, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I remembering reading on Slashdot that SMS was less used due to calls costing less than SMS or something like that. -- hoshie 07:45, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

SMS usage is less in the US for a number of reasons, these are a couple -

1. The low number of Pre-Paid phones, in Europe, the youth market played a huge role in the growth of SMS. 2. Not all Carriers (Operators) are GSM, therefore the interconnect and compatibility of SMS between networks is hampered. 3. Phone Compatability, it's only recently that all phones have supported this technology. 4. Pricing models, some carriers still charge the receive (and not the sender) to use SMS. Which is plainly just bezarre.

---User:Rmalcolm:Rmalcolm 10 September 2005 (GMT)

Some U.S. carriers charge 5 or 10 cents on both ends, thus discouraging both the sending and receiving of text messages. A pricing model like that of Singapore's (according to the article) would probably be far more successful in the U.S. (first few hundred messages free, then charge).

Also, in response to the Push-to-Talk argument, text messaging has its advantages in being discrete.

I strongly disagree with the opinion that this article presents of the popularity of text messaging. At my high school, everyone texts, and does so constantly. And when I say constantly, I mean constantly. There should be something added about the exponentially increasing popularity among young people in the US. Sloverlord 03:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

UK TV Shows

When a TV show (in the UK at least) invites viewers to send in votes or comments via sms, sometimes the number given is shorter than the usual 11-digits [(07xx) xxx xxxx] Anyone know why? Adambisset 13:29, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

5 digit SMS numbers are popular both in the UK and the US (and possibly other countries, though I don't know about that), simply because they're easier to remember, etc. I assume that companies can purchase/rent these 5 digit numbers.

Actually a 5 digit number in the UK (either starting with 8 or 6) indicates that this is a Premium Shortcode, which can be ordered from each Operator and used for a fee. Usually these shortcodes are setup as MO billed, as no content is being delivered which means the Sucess biling ratio is likely to be higher as messages will be billed immediately. ---User:Rmalcolm:Rmalcolm 10 September 2005 (GMT)

Technical details

This article seems a little short on technical details. How do text messages get from phone to phone, exactly? Where is the standard specified? Are there successor standards in development? -- Beland 23:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, the intro paragraph here says that the GSM collection of standards originally defined the Short Message Service, but that the definition is now being used elsewhere, as well. So that question's answered.

After working on GSM services, I discovered that from GSM phones, SMSes go via a GSM data protocol to the Short message service centre at the phone company, and then from there, SMPP may or may not be involved to get it to a peer SMSC or some service on the Internet. The SMS Tutorial in the External links section provides a lot more information; it would be a good source for rounding out this article.

The successor standard, MMS, should be mentioned in the body of the article.

As for the shorter number business, I assume the SMS protocol requires that the recipient's address be an E.164 number (a standard phone number) and the numbers given on the air just happen to be unusually short (see Special Service Numbers at UK telephone numbering plan). The 3GPP spec is on 3gpp.org (though it might help to read the above-mentioned tutorial before trying to find it). It would be useful to check and include this information in the article. -- Beland 16:13, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This has already been stated, but, it seems a little short on tech details. I came looking for an answer as to if the messages flew encrypted or in plain text, and it's not discussed at all. It's mentioned that SMS messaging follows the GSM spec, but it doesn't point to said spec anywhere near where it's mentioned. -rafa 22:10, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

GSM messages aren't encrypted, but are usually in 7-bit characters. Every seven octets (bytes) can therefore hold eight characters. It's done for compression rather than for obfuscation, but it does mean that the "encoded" text is not immediately obvious to a casual "hacker". It's somewhat similar to leaving the key under (or maybe on top of) the doormat rather than in the lock. There's nothing to prevent an application running on top of SMS from encrypting messages, but it's not a standard part of the protocol - in fact txt-speak could be said to be a sort of encryption. SMeeds 23:48, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Quite a bizarre rambling you've written there, sir. SMS is plaintext and any PDU reader worth its salt (even Ethereal) will trivially display 7-bit characters. However, during actual transmission SMS travels over the GSM radio interface, which is encrypted, and it's thus quite difficult to snoop on somebody else's SMSes unless you have access to the core network. Jpatokal 14:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I didn't think I rambled much on this occasion, though I am prone to it. I am aware of air interface encrytpion, but know little of it. My areas of expertise are messaging and fraud (AUC and EIR principally). From my viewpoint I see the vulnerable area as the SMSC. It is very easy to write a little programme on the SMSC to decode the 7-bit encoded messages. When I was involved in developing an SMSC we had a tool for doing just that - it was initially for debugging purposes, though it was later used in support of the security services of certain countries. Nevertheless, I understand that while using it for debugging, some interesting texts were seen such as covert communications between senior members of the operator's staff and their extra-marital "partners". As with email, don't write anything in a text message you wouldn't put on a postcard (i.e. for the postman to see)!! SMeeds 00:12, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

SMS?

In phrases such as "18 billion SMS were sent in 2001" it would be more correct to use "SM" or "short message" rather than "SMS". "SMS" expands to "Short Message Service" and is the service provided by the "SMSC" (Short Message Service Centre) rather than the message itself. I haven't changed the article on this basis, because SMS may have come into common usage in this sense. --SMeeds 11:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

The accepted format for this is SMS messages, or at least that's how I've heard it used, and that makes sense gramatically. I've changed the article to match.

Clarification

US Usage figures

The article states "only 13 messages were sent by the average user in 2003 [in the US]". This is unclear as to whether this means what it states literally, i.e. 13 messages in the whole year, or if it is an error, and the figure refers to the average monthly figure, as is with the figures stated earlier in the section. On it's own, the paragraph is clear, but in light of the fact that figures were stated recently that were monthly, it would be helpful to explicitly state the time period involved. --me_and 2 July 2005 23:57 (UTC)

Unclear statement

The statement "Classic cannon game and similar are quite suitable for that kind of entertainment." under popularity doesn't seem to make sense, but without knowing what it is trying to say, I can't correct it. I've removed it in the meantime, but if anyone can clarify and add the text back in, that would be preferable. --me_and 2 July 2005 23:57 (UTC)

Malaysian\ Islamic law

The two sections relating to it seem to be unclear.

Payment

Is it possible to charge people extra for sending you an SMS? I mean, could I i.e. develop a dictionary service where I would charge 40 cents per SMS a customer sends me?

Yes, this is known as Premium SMS and comes in two flavours, MT Billing (the message is billed when it terminates on the handset) or MO billing where the message is billed when the request leaves the handset. For a dictionary service, I would suggest MT billing, as the end user would only get billed when he receives the definition to his question. If he / she never receives the answer they won't get billed and you won't receive any money. ---User:Rmalcolm:Rmalcolm 10 September 2005 (GMT)

Mandarin Chinese

Some clarification is apparently needed in section 5 (Txt speak). This paragraph bothers me slightly:

In Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For example, the numbers 521 in Chinese ("wu er yi") sound like the words for "I love you" ("wo ai ni"). The sequence 748 ("qi si ba") sounds like the curse for "drop dead".

To Western ears, "wu er yi" doesn't seem very similar to "wo ai ni"--kind of like if I were to write 582, intending it to mean "I hate you". I suspect tones are important here--if the corresponding syllables in the sentences had the same tones, it would make a lot more sense--but this is pure deduction from my part, and I'd appreciate if someone can verify this. If I'm actually wrong, please disregard all of this.

Anyway, to make this truly comprehensible, we should include tones in the transliteration (and possibly add a short explanation of why they're important). Mandarin speakers wanted, in other words. EldKatt (Talk) 15:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

UK Popularity

If someone should feel so inclined to add such details, 82m messages were sent per day in the UK in 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4582060.stm violet/riga (t) 22:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

History

Regarding: "One factor in the takeup of SMS was that operators were slow to eliminate billing fraud which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to the SMSC's of other operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and by new features within SMSC's to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through it." This seems to be misplaced in the history section, it is not dated and somehow doesn't appear relevant. Comments? Colin99 08:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

It is not my statement, so I am not defending, but discussing it. It is a historical loophole in that it existed since the start of SMS and has now been "fixed". I suggest therefore that it belongs under "History". The only thing that is missing is an indication of the date when the hole was plugged. I would guess that it is different for different operators (and certainly for different SMSC and network vendors), and that the exact date is not published, but maybe someone can add an indication of it. SMeeds 09:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Active editors: Have you thought of writing...

...an article about GPS/SMS bugs? These tiny devices, hidden somewhere at your car, determine its position via GPS and transmit the coordinates via GSM's (or other standards') SMS service to your surveillant(s). They are apparently widely abused by the LEC, secret services or private snoops, thereby infringing on basic civil liberties. Also the aspect of possible counter-weapons could be discussed.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_Positioning_System and check out '14: GPS tracking'. Feel free to contact me directly, if you prefer.

Michael

http://worldimprover.net/EN/en8.html

I know we're not a how-to, but...

...this article would really gain from a step-by-step description of how one person would typically send a text message to another (e.g., Person A needs to know Person B's cell phone number; Person A goes into a menu on his her mobile phone for sending a text message; etc.). I'm not the one to write this, because I've literally never sent a text message by phone (bizarre, given that I'm a software developer, but, hey, I'm old). - Jmabel | Talk 17:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to give generic instructions for this, every phone is different and most have about a million shortcuts. Eg. if I get a new message, I can just hit the right button a few times to automatically create a reply to the sender. Jpatokal 22:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

SMS-CB

There's a brief mention in the article of GSM 03.41 Short Message Service - Cell Broadcast (SMS-CB). Is this ever used, and can we have some detail on it? 86.136.3.184 14:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Mobile providers resisting SOS alerts, International Herald Tribune, retrieved 20:59, 17 September 2006 (UTC) says the Dutch gov't paid mobile operators to carry gov't text warnings, making it the first European country to support such broadcasts in October 2005. First country in the world being South Korea, according to the article, in order to emit weather warnings or emergencies. RasqualTwilight 20:59, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

See also Proximity marketing#GSM-based systems mentioning advertisement/service-oriented CB'ing, this blog entry mentioning USA Homeland Security Department wanting ability to send warnings of national emergencies. This document (pdf) claims SMS-CB was used in Hanover CeBIT about the event schedules etc.RasqualTwilight 21:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Flash SMS

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (April 2007)

Article lacks mention of Flash SMS (SMS that appear when received without any user information).

Agreed, needs mention, (perhaps there should be a seperate article about Flash SMS. Mathiastck 18:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Message Vista

Could someone please block User:67.70.97.59 from adding a link to MessageVista from Short message service. I believe this is just User:MessageVista who was previously engaged in the same activity, continuing with this self-publicity campaign, which is against Wikipedia policy. Even if it isn't him there is a comment on Short message service which attempts to enforce no commercial links. Today I have already reverted and left a message on his Talk, which has been deleted and the article re-edited. I don't want to risk three reverts, so I would welcome some help here. Thanks. SMeeds 12:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

US Usage

From various movies, TV-shows etc I get the feeling that BlackBerries, SideKicks, Two-ways and similar devices are more common in the US than in for example Europe and New Zealand.

Do those devices use SMS, or some other technologies. If they do, perhaps there should be a section discussing the different kinds of devices used for SMS:ing. If not, that might be part of the explanation to the lower SMS usage in the states. Or maybe it's just product placement that I have seen, and there is really no difference. Does anybody know more? /Kriko 15:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

wap push

Their already existed a Wap push page that was just a copyright violation. I cleaned it up and turned it into a wireless stub, but it could use more love. Mathiastck 23:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Finnish paragraph in US section

Why does the US section start rambling on about Finland?

Becuase everything about mobile somehow ties back into Finland? Seriously though if we are giving sections heading, at least they should be accurate. I created new headers, but someone may want to reorg them a bit. Mathiastck 07:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Technical Section again

The technical section, as has been noted previously, is lacking.

• It is quite GSM-centric (reference to MAP protocol, for example - in CDMA networks, that should be AS-41 (or IS-41), with different message names). Does an ANSI network even use GSM 03.40/3GPP 23.040 to define the APDUs?
• The sentence

Messages are sent via a store-and-forward mechanism to a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), which will attempt to send the message to the recipient.

is incorrect - the Store & Forward Engine (SFE) lives on the SMSC. SMSs reach the SMSC using the MAP or AS-41 protocol from the Serving MSC or SGSN. Not even beginning to get into the air interface aspects.

• The OTA piece doesn't seem complete, or is possibly incorrect in some aspects. For example, the SIM Update mechanism is OTA provisioning, but isn't vendor specific; the information elements on a SIM are pretty well defined in standards.

I can certainly beef up the technical details from a GSM perspective (10 years in the industry, with a fair amount of specialism in the SMS world), but I'm wary of getting too technical (seen enough talk pages complaining about 'expert brain dumps'). I can't address ANSI networks technicalities, and I don't think the subject deserves separate AS-41 vs MAP pages, which could make it become messy (if too much detail) or vague (if not enough). Carre 13:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Source of first commercial message information

I've been looking for a source for the "first commercial SMS message" information and can't find a contemporary one. Also, most web sources use an identical form of words to that on this page, suggesting copy and paste.

Can anyone give a contemporary or otherwise more authoritative source for the date and details of this event?

Mswake 16:20, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

---

Thank you for your interest in the "story" about Neil Papworth sending the world's first commercial short message to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone. I understand your request for a citation, but I suspect it would be somewhat difficult (though not impossible) to find a definitive written record. I was on the team at Sema Group that developed the SMSC for Vodafone and Neil was one of our programmers. Richard Jarvis was at the head of Vodata: the part of Vodafone that commissioned the SMSC.

On the day in question many members of the team were invited by Richard to Newbury for lunch, and while we were eating our sandwiches Richard announced that he had just received the first short message.

I related the story in an interview with Martin Shankleman on BBC Radio 2 in October 2005 (I can send you the recording if you wish). This was after several people had independently come up with the same story, some including Neil's name, some not. While I knew Neil to be the originator of the short message, I did not remember all of the details, such as the date, so I did some research before appearing on the programme.

You can check this story to some extent by looking at the Web site of Airwide Solutions, which includes a reference to it. Airwide was formed when Taral Networks bought the messaging part of SchlumbergerSema. SchlumbergerSema was in turn formed when Schlumberger bought Sema Group. You can find other references to it using simple Google searches, though it may be difficult to work out which predated the fact being on Wikipedia or on Radio 2 and which came after. If you wish to check the facts with Neil Papworth himself see his Web site. Let me know if you need more information. SMeeds 11:02, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

---

Added information about handset hardware after email correspondence with people who were there (thanks Simons). Slightly staggered by Wikipedia, again.

Mswake 20:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Guinness World Record

IP address 193.8.50.165 added the "Guiness[sic] book of records" section. No problem with that - I heard myself, on a BBC Radio 2 news report, that the world record for speed texting had been broken. What I have a problem with (apart from the missing 'n' in Guinness) is that the time listed in the new section, 57.75 seconds, conflicts with the last entry in "Social development", which states that the previous record was 43.24 seconds. Also, The Register [1] has the record set by a Singaporean, not "a high school kid in Utah", and the new time as 41.52 seconds.

I'll change it in a bit, if there's no objection: will remove the new section, and simply replace the old record details (which were out of date anyway) with the new one. Carre 20:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Posted to the bottom

Sarah Ailsworth November 15, 2006 Mass Media Communication Ferguson Wikipedia Assignment

Text Messaging From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Text messaging, also known as Short Message Servive (SMS), began in the late 1980’s by a group of Europeans striving to improve systems for the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM). But, in 1993 the messaging was accidently used by an engineering student.

History

Primarily, Nokia jumped all over text messaging in countries such as China and Japan , and consequently the first marketable SMS service debuted in 1995. One main appeal of text messaging for companies is that phones are not required to be in range to receive a message, furthermore all messages will be held until the phone is in full function. Text messages are sent via an SMS center that delivers the messages to the correct user.

On the onset of the popularity of the text message, the majority of users were teenagers keeping in touch with their friends on a continual basis, but recently many companies now are using the text message to keep their staff in touch with one another.

Through the evolution of the cell phone, text messaging has molded to meet the vigorous demands of the industry. Specialty phones like Blackberries, have connected e-mail with text messaging so one can view their e-mail as a text message. Additionally, a wide-range of companies today now offer web sites where you can send a text message with out even having a cell phone.

Culture

The text message has advanced to become such a vital part of our everyday communication that it has become a main channel of communication for millions of people around the world. Its vast popularity has been gained because it is a way to keep in touch with people no matter their location. Texting is much more cost efficient then paying for long distance phone calls and outrageous cell phone bills.

The Truth about Text

Texts are cheap, big, easy, and evolving. Various mobile phone operators offer reduced rates and free texting. On the matter of cost, text messages have the comforting advantage of being fixed in price, whereas phone calls are typically charged by the minute. Getting cut off in the middle of a text is unheard of. Larger, separate keyboards which can be attached to mobile phones are now available. An array of smartphones now have larger ’13-line’ displays. This more innovative display technology on phones means that their screens have both a sharper and brighter image. Texting is as simple as 1-2-3. Specific instructions on how to text can be easily accessed on a specific network operators website or by simply asking a friend of family member. Predictive texting, or “word” texting is where the phone guesses the words as one hits the keys, meaning texters do not even have to be able to spell. Text messaging is in the works of evolving into every type of phone. Operators have begun introducing mobile to landline texting, where one can send a text to a home phone number that will further be read out by an automated voice…and vice versa. Additionally, it is also feasible to dictate a message to an operator by way of a landline which can be sent as a text message to a mobile number.

Major Benefits of Texts

A complete host of services are now readily available through text messages. Alerts like medicine reminders and news alerts can now be provided by text messages. In addition, text messaging has become ground-breaking in politics. Nationwide, text messaging is active, and is often used in Asia to organize many political protests. Just this past May in Seoul, a sixteen-year-old South Korean text messaged his friend during class not even having to glance at his cell phone keypad while typing in, “Gwanghwamun station. 6:00” (USA Today). In this particular situation, the texts quickly spread, illustrating the news of the spontaneous rally. The following day in downtown Seoul, over 400 students congregated as activists against the extreme pressures they must undergo for the nation’s extremely competitive college-entrance exam. Numerous students decided to come out to the rally at last minute after receiving a text-message from a friend pertaining to it. “I don’t think the rally would have been big if we didn’t have cell phones,” says Im Soon-jae, one of the organizers. “We would not have been able to spread the information about this as quickly” (USA Today).

Text messaging has clearly become the new political tool for activists. In technology-centered nations such as South Korea, China, and the Middle East, text messaging has established a “mobile democracy”. REFERENCES Text.it. The UK’s definitive text related information source. <http://www.text.it/text/truth.cfm> Text Messaging <http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nlstewar/txt/culture.htm> USA Today. <http://www.USATODAY.com>

Cultural Speculation

Under "Popularity" there is a line: "text messaging is associated with a fast pace of life and France is more reluctant than others to dispense with its traditions." Surely this is pure speculation and is, in a word, rubbish. Is it a universally-agreed fact that the French are more traditional and less inclined to innovation and new modes of thinking than, say, the British? Shall we have a competition as to who is the most "backward" country? Wikipedia should a place to gather facts, not opinions - and certainly not those "oh everyone knows that" opinions... 85.210.209.41 12:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

SMS across networks?

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (April 2007)

There is no mention of how SMS is sent between carriers, or agreements between carriers that allow it. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ (AMA) 20:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Inter-operator SMS delivery isn't, really, any different to delivery within an operator. All that's needed is an SCCP interworking agreement so the MAP messages can get from the SMSC to the OLO's HLR and MSCs. Internationally, that's probably a case of the international carrier having the agreements with all the operators, rather than each operator having to have an agreement with all the others, although I'm not sure about that... that's a commercial thing, not a technical thing ;) 86.144.170.33 19:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Needs a re-write...

This article is so poorly written (grammatical errors, sentence structure, organization, etc...) it's a real challenge to read it with any understanding. I'd take a shot at it myself, but am unfamiliar with the subject matter. 68.32.143.124 04:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree it is definitely choppy and could benefit from someone going through and rephrasing everything for improved clarity. I've done that for the intro so far. The detailed sections could also use a lot more inline references. -- Beland 05:58, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I've considered rewriting the technical section in the past, but I only have GSM knowledge and didn't want to make the article even more GSM-centric. On the technical sections, a load of inline references aren't really applicable - maybe just refs to 2 or 3 of the relevant 3GPP specs (again GSM-centric). 29.002 for MAP, and the SMS & SMS-CB specs are already mentioned. 86.144.170.33 18:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

This article is extremely GSM-biased.

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007) Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

short SMS existed on AMPS in the 1990's and on all other digital technologies. They are rarely mentioned.

Questions

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (April 2007)

• GSM services says that SMS services can be transmitted over Circuit Switched Data, High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data, or GPRS links, but is more commonly transmitted via SS7. In this article, there is some mention of TCP/IP. Then there is SMS over non-GSM protocols. This is all very confusing, and it also doesn't answer simple questions like, "how does the cell phone tower know that an incoming packet is an SMS and not general Internet traffic?" It would be helpful to show full protocol stacks (see e.g. Mobile Application Part) for a handful of typical situations, just so readers can get straight in their heads which layer the various acronyms refer to.
• Why would anyone send an SMS over a circuit-switched connection? That seems wasteful.
• How does the SMSC fit into this diagram? Image:Gsm network.png
• It would be interesting to have some discussion of why "store and forget" might be a good idea, where delays can happen, and some technical details on how the SMSC knows a phone which was out of range has become available again.

-- Beland 06:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

• "how does the cell phone tower know that an incoming packet is an SMS and not general Internet traffic?"

I am no expert on the air interface, but I would expect the BTS and BSC to know which types of message transported on the SS7 control channels are for them and which are just to be passed on to the specified recipient.

Where the SMS is delivered over GPRS, in fact it still uses SS7; the HLR responds to the SRI-for-SM with the SGSN address, and the SMSC sends the mt-ForwardSM to the SGSN over SS7 instead of to the visited MSC. (In actual fact, even though ForwardSM has been split into separate MO and MT messages, most SMSC vendors just stick to using mo-ForwardSM and set the application context to deliver or submit, depending on which direction the message is going... very frustrating if you're writing an SS7 protocol decoder!). 86.144.170.33 18:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• "It would be helpful to show full protocol stacks (see e.g. Mobile Application Part) for a handful of typical situations, just so readers can get straight in their heads which layer the various acronyms refer to."

That can be found at Signaling System 7

• "Why would anyone send an SMS over a circuit-switched connection? That seems wasteful."

I can see what you mean, that setting up a circuit for the small amount of data contained in a short message would involve significant overhead, but you are missing the point.

Depending on the implementation, the SMSC is typically responsible for transmission and receipt of short message-releated communication over the SS7 network. Usually, behind the SMSC, there is a set of gateways or interfaces to other systems with interest in SMS. A simple example of this, and one which was present from the first implementations of the SMSC, is voice mail (VM). Typically the voice mail system submits a short message informing the subscriber that he has a voice message waiting. The interface between the VM system and the SMSC will depend on the manufacturer of the VM system. For example, the original (Sema Group) implementation of SMSC for Vodafone interfaced with an Ericsson voice mail system using SS7. Other implementations may use IP (e.g. using the industry-standard SMPP - Short Message Peer-to-peer protocol), or some other open or proprietary protocol. The choice of this protocol is not usually under the control of the SMSC developer, and may indeed be a matter of legacy in terms of the VM system. There is certainly no reason that it should not be a circuit-switched protocol. A similar arrangement will exist between the SMSC and all non-mobile SMEs (Short Message Entities).

• "How does the SMSC fit into this diagram? Image:Gsm network.png"

It communicates using the SS7 Network and sits in the NSS. This is not particularly revealing. What is more interesting is that it communicates with the HLR and MSC.

Actually, and SMSC is made up of several logical components. The Store and Forward Engine (SFE), and a couple of MSCs - a Gateway MSC (GMSC) for delivery of SMS, and an InterWorking MSC (IWMSC) for receipt of SMS. Physically, of course, it's typically the 1 box. In any case, from a GSM network signalling perspective, you could consider the SMSC as an MSC with limited, and specialised, functionality. 86.144.170.33 18:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• "It would be interesting to have some discussion of why "store and forget" might be a good idea, where delays can happen,"

I think you mean "forward and forget" as opposed to "store and forward". "store and forget" seems a rather useless feature, akin to binning the contents of your in-tray. There are two common situations where "f&f" might be used as opposed to "s&f" (my abbreviations).

a) Where the target SME is highly available. The mobile SME (the combination of all subscribers' mobile terminals - handsets) is considered to be low availability. This is because they can be switched off, out of coverage, or their memory can be full (among other error conditions). Usually, except as explained below, you would try to deliver a message and on failure queue the messsage for a retry (s&f). If however the target SME (sink of the message) is a fixed, high availability system, then you would expect the message to get through first time; if it doesn't then there is a serious problem which you probably can't do much about, so you wouldn't bother trying again - at least not during the timeframe of an automatic retry, so you might use "f&f".

b) Where the loss of a message is of little importance. For example, where a message is sent every minute reporting the status of some device, the loss of a single message may not be considered an error, since there will be another coming along in a minute which would in any case replace it. Therefore you might use "f&f"

A 3rd case would be for premium content MT SMS (Information on Demand, or IoD). Consider football match alerts, where you sign up to receive a text every time your team scores - what would be the point of receiving these alerts on a Monday when the match was on Saturday? And worse, paying for them! Similarly, stock market alerts. These aren't strictly speaking fire & forget - instead, they typically just have very short expiry times. 86.144.170.33 18:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• "and some technical details on how the SMSC knows a phone which was out of range has become available again."

When a delivery to a mobile fails the SMSC can send a message to the HLR to set a flag against that mobile (actually msisdn) to indicate that it would like to be alerted when the mobile becomes available again. When the HLR notices that the mobile is once again available (switched on, in coverage, etc.) it will send an "AlertSC" to the SMSC which requested the alert. The SMSC will usually then retry the transmission of a message. The SMSC may use AlertSC, timed retries or a combination of the two to implement "s&f" functionality.

That's part of the story, but only on the first occurrence of the subscriber being unable to receive an SM. Once the HLR is informed of the sub's unavailability, it will set an appropriate flag against the subscriber's profile (MNRF - mobile not reachable flag; MCEF - memory capacity exceeded flag; and others). From that point on, the HLR will respond to the SMSC's SRI-for-SM with a failure (see note below though), indicating the reason, and automatically add the SMSC's address to the subscriber's Message Waiting Delivery (MWD) list. That way, the network isn't wasting resources trying to deliver SMs to handsets that are known to be unavailable. The HLR is informed of a subscriber's availability in a couple of ways: Where the sub has been out of coverage, when they come back they'll attach to the network, and the Location Update will trigger the HLR to send alerts to all SMSCs stored in the MWD list. Where the MS has had its memory full, and the sub deletes some texts, a Ready-for-SM message is sent from the VMSC/VLR to the HLR, again triggering the alerts to the SMSCs.

On top of that, the SMSC will go into a retry schedule anyway, attempting to periodically deliver the SM without getting an alert. The retry schedule interval will depend on the original failure cause - transient network failures will result in short retry schedule, whereas out of coverage will typically result in a longer schedule.

(Note on HLR responding with failure to SRI-for-SM. The SMSC can override this behaviour, if it wants to, by setting a priority flag in the SRI-for-SM; in this case, the HLR will always respond with the last known location of the subscriber. Why would the SMSC want to do that? Couple of cases spring to mind: 1) Where the SMS is set to overwrite existing texts in the handset of the same sort, for example voice mail notification. 2) OTA SIM updates - these don't need to be stored on the MS, instead the handset should pass these SMs to the SIM straight away, so the SIM configuration can be updated. OK, not much use where the sub is out of coverage, but useful where the memory is full.) 86.144.170.33 18:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me; I am a little rusty and no doubt out-of-date in my SMSC knowledge, but I am sure someone else will correct me if I have made any mistakes.

SMeeds 01:01, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

And finally, I will note that all my additions and answers above are GSM ONLY; if any one with non-GSM knowledge wants to add to it, how about adding to it instead of just moaning about it? 86.144.170.33 18:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC) Struck out the above rather sarky comment - was unnecessary... it's been a long day, and I've been staring at failing inter system handovers all day! lol. Apologies. 86.144.170.33 18:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite of technical section

Folks,

I've been tinkering a bit with a new version of the technical section - it's at User:Carre/Short_Message_Service. This is only the start of the rewrite - there's a load more stuff to go into it, as well as copy-editing bits of the current section in. I'm posting this here so people can go and have a look - what I really want to know is whether people think that this may end up being just too technical and in-depth, or even too long for the article. If you can take a peek and let me know if it's worth my while continuing to work on it, I'd be most grateful. If people think it's OTT, then I'll just bin it.

Thanks Carre 12:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

"Citation needed" in first paragraph

"It is available on most digital mobile phones and some personal digital assistants with onboard wireless telecommunications." Why does this apparently need a citation? 77.97.213.30 17:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 16:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

New York ban

Recently, an IP address added to the article about a recent proposal in NY to ban texting while driving. I'm considering removing the addition, since a google shows that NY State has a "de facto" ban on texting while driving, since there are laws prohibiting any use of a mobile whilst driving [2]. If no objections in the next couple of days, the addition will go. Seems to me if the new law is being proposed, it's about as useful as the mobile phone ban in the UK - ie the specific law isn't needed, since the offence is covered by other, existing, legislation. If there are objections, I'll change the date format to un-Americanize it, as well as try to find out whether the new law applies to NYC or the state. Possibly of more interest would be the relatively small number of states that actually do ban texting whilst driving! Carre 19:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Never mind - was already removed by an anonymous IP address. Carre 19:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)