The Mechanics Of Modern SMS/Text Messaging

SMS answering, also known as small message service has become wildly popular in recent years. Known by it’s more popular name, text messaging, the number of text messages has jumped to approximately 4.1 trillion messages a year since it’s introduction in 1992. Although most cell phone users text message, few know how the system works. Text messaging is a relatively new technology as it required not only mobile telephones sophisticated enough to receive viewable messages, but a means of transmission strong enough to receive and send megabytes of date correctly without the use of wires. It was not until 1992 that the German company GSM that the technology moved from the idealistic innovation stage to a more practical format.

The first problem presented by the text messaging idea was the need to find a size of data large enough to be practical as a messaging system but small enough to fit into the cell phone without overloading or overworking it. After different sizes were experimented with, the 140 byte size, which translated to approximately 160 characters was used. This is still the norm for text message sizes today. A secondary issue was attempting to transmit the data. Before a text message is readable, it is broken down from the characters visible the sender or recipient as a long string of numbers corresponding to each character or space. These are then sent digitally from one phone to another (hence the need for small messages, to allow this to be a time sensitive messaging system) and decoded by the same application.

SMS messaging is used by 74% of all cell phone users, most of them under the age of 25. It is a great way to transmit quick messages and is becoming the way businesses communicate. In fact, SMS is the preferred method of transmission for answering services to reach their customers. It is extremely popular, and easy to understand.