Short Message Service (SMS) (PDF)

Contributions from Finn Trosby, Kevin Holley, Ian Harris

Written to celebrate the 25th anniversary of SMS
standardization by the people who produced the standards, Short
Message Service (SMS): The Creation of Personal Text Messaging,
describes the development of the SMS standard and its ongoing
evolution. The standardization of SMS started in February 1985 as a
part of the creation of the second generation digital cellular
system GSM, and the 25th anniversary of the first work on SMS
provides an opportunity to review and understand how this service
was developed. The book also looks to the future, as a large number
of new GSM and evolved GSM phones will support SMS as a mass market
high availability messaging service, a new simple Multimedia
Messaging Service (MMS) suitable for use by everyone and for
implementation in every new terminal is proposed.

* One of the only books which covers the complete SMS genesis
from concept ideas to standardization of a first technical solution
and its evolution to the present day.

* Describes the service concept including the limitation of the
message length to 160 characters and explains the rationale behind
the concept.

* Based on existing and newly retrieved documentation.

* Concludes that SMS has a long future since most future GSM
phones will support SMS as the only messaging service, and so an
SMS evolution is put forward.