The acronym SMS stands for Short Message Service, which is one of the most used utility on a mobile phone system. This utility is used to send text messages over mobile phones or fixed lines using the communications protocols. The popularity and usage of the application can be gauged from the fact that there are nearly 2.4 billion users that use the service, comprising 74% of the total subscribers of mobile phones.
The SMS development that we see today has originated from the radio telegraphy that was used in the radio memo pagers. The process used the standard phone protocols to send messages and this later became a part of the standards for the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
The proposal on the SMS development was initiated by the German and French contributors in the GSM meeting with elaborations on the WP1 and WP3 networks. The actual SMS development took place in the 1980s when the concept was floated that the systems that were telephony-optimized be used for sending messages at times when there was no signaling traffic. This led to the optimum use of resources. Slowly the SMS development took shape and further changes were initiated.
In 1987 the proposals for SMS development were handed over to the Implementation of Data and Telematic Services Experts Group, later known as WP4 which recommended the GSM 03.40 and the GSM 03.41 specifications. The work was carried on the draft for a few years after which the first SMS was sent on December 3, 1992 over the Vodafone GSM network.
The current scenario of SMS messages is that the year gone by saw more than 4 trillion messages being sent globally. The SMS has given rise to a new industry having a worth of more than 85 billion dollars, globally. While the cost of the SMS for the providers is almost nil the users are charged as per the provider chosen.
No comments:
Post a Comment