SMS is an incredible global success. At the time of writing (mid-2009) it can be used by all 4 billion GSM customers. More than 50 short messages are generated per month per GSM user. The service has created a $100 billion turnover industry. This success has been enabled mainly by the comprehensive and robust standards that have been made mandatory for every network and for every mobile from the very beginning. The standardisation of SMS started in February 1985 within the framework of GSM standardisation.
We will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of SMS in early 2010. There is an interest in understanding how this service was created, but no comprehensive description of the genesis of SMS is available. Hence, this book will provide a record of the genesis of SMS.
The book is written by people who have been at the forefront of GSM/SMS standardisation work from the time the first ideas of an SMS service were created to the present day. Therefore this book can describe the genesis of SMS from the beginning to present day. A review of the present situation and of market forecasts shows that SMS has a promising long-term future.
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.
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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.
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Describes the service concept including the limitation of the message length to 160 characters and explains the rationale behind the concept.
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Based on existing and newly retrieved documentation.
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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.