March 9, 2023, 5:58 pm | Read time: 5 minutes
Everyone knows them, and almost everyone has sent or received one at some point–the SMS. For over 30 years now, it has been one of the most popular ways to communicate. But how did the SMS actually come about?
The rise of SMS began in December 1992. It was a historic Christmas greeting that set off back then. The sender was British programmer Neil Papworth. The Christmas greetings landed on an Orbitel TPU 901, a mobile phone weighing over two kilograms. It belonged to Richard Jarvis, then a manager at the telecommunications company Vodafone. He was thrilled, not so much about the Christmas greeting, but more about receiving the first SMS. The journey to that point had taken some time.
An Idea from the ’80s
Since the mid-1980s, IT specialists have been working on a mobile network standard that functions across Europe. Allegedly, it was Matti Makkonen who first spoke of the idea of a short message service in 1984. He was working on the planned mobile standard at the Finnish Post. The Finn dreamed of sending not only voice but also text messages over a mobile network.
His idea initially remained a vision for the future. However, a European mobile network was taking increasingly concrete shape. The development was primarily driven by Switzerland and the Deutsche Bundespost, the predecessor of Deutsche Telekom.
GSM Enables SMS
In the early 1990s, the first attempts to establish a mobile network in Europe began. The Global System for Mobile Communications–GSM for short–was introduced, the first mobile standard valid across Europe. Since there were already regional network standards, experts referred to it as the second-generation mobile standard, later known as “2G.”
For voice to be transmitted over GSM, the network needed sufficient capacity. It turned out that the available capacity was much larger than necessary. This realization led to using the capacity reserve for transmitting text messages. Thus, SMS was a technical serendipity.
As with all technical innovations, there were still many questions to be answered about SMS, such as how long a short message should be. The Deutsche Bundespost, then still a state-owned company, took the lead. They decided on a limit of 160 characters. This length was not chosen arbitrarily.
At the time, the Post made a tidy profit from sending telegrams and telexes, which usually contained fewer than 160 characters. For good reason: each word in a telegram cost money. The company saw SMS as a potential threat because it was initially free for mobile customers.
Incidentally, Deutsche Post offered a telegram service until the end of 2022. However, due to a lack of demand, it was finally discontinued.
Read more here: Deutsche Post permanently discontinues historic service
What Actually Happened to Mannesmann?
The Beginnings of Mobile Communications – How the World of Cell Phones Came About
SMS: Writing with Difficulties
The triumph of SMS initially progressed haltingly. Although all open questions had been resolved, the appropriate devices were still missing. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the general public could finally send short text messages.
Sending them was challenging. The cell phones of the time only had a numeric keypad. While letters could be typed using it, for the letter “L,” the “5” key had to be pressed three times–a tedious exercise for 160 characters. Additionally, the character limit led to a proliferation of abbreviations, some of which persist into the WhatsApp era. We owe SMS for abbreviations like “LOL,” “N8,” “HDL,” or “CU.”
As mobile phones became more widespread, the number of text messages sent via SMS also increased. Network operators recognized this trend and wanted to profit from it. In Germany, an SMS cost 39 pfennigs before the euro was introduced. With the currency change, a standard of 19 cents was established. Despite the steep prices, Germans texted enthusiastically.
In 1998, for the first time, a billion SMS were sent, a truly profitable business for network operators. And it got even better. The peak was reached in 2012, with about 60 billion SMS sent from sender to recipient.
Does SMS Have a Future?
According to experts, SMS should have been obsolete by now. After all, since 2009, mobile users have discovered WhatsApp. There are no character limits, and besides text, other media can be sent in seconds, all for free.
However, SMS has a crucial advantage over all other messaging services: it works standardized and without much technical knowledge on any mobile device or smartphone. That’s why the end of SMS has been predicted many times, but it hasn’t happened yet.
After more than 30 years, there is still no sign of a quick demise. On the contrary, in 2021, the number of SMS sent in Germany increased from 7 billion the previous year to 7.8 billion, the first rise since the record year of 2012. The reason for the increase, however, has nothing to do with a renewed love for SMS among Germans. Industry experts suspect it’s due to the wider use of so-called two-factor authentication. Many service providers like PayPal use this method for security reasons. Identifying users via SMS remains the safest way.
And certainly, many Christmas SMS greetings will continue to travel around the globe in the future. In fact, most SMS are still sent every year on January 1st, just after midnight. Here’s to cherished rituals.