Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages

between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to
message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.
In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa

4 Social impact
o

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools

4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges
o

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered cross-

network SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger
Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's
Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text
messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up
with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by

mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages
between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to
message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.
In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.

Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa
4 Social impact

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools

4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges
o

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]

In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered crossnetwork SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger
Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's
Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text

messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up
with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by
mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages
between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to
message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.
In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa

4 Social impact
o

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools

4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered crossnetwork SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger
Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's
Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text
messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]

Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up
with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by
mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages
between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to

message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.
In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa

4 Social impact
o

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools
4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges
o

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered crossnetwork SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger

Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's
Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text
messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up
with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by
mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages
between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to
message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.
In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa
4 Social impact

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools

4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges
o

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]

The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered crossnetwork SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger
Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's
Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text
messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]

Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up
with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by
mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.

Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages
between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to
message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.
In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa

4 Social impact
o

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools

4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of

TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered crossnetwork SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger
Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's
Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text
messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up

with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by
mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending brief, electronic messages
between two or more mobile phones, or fixed or portable devices over a phone network. The term
originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS). It has grown to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of a
text message is known as a texter, while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on
the region. It may simply be referred to as a text in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand and the Philippines, an SMS in most of mainland Europe, and an MMS orSMS in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Text messages can be used to interact with automated systems to, for example, to order products or
services, or to participate in contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to
message mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, et cetera instead of using mail,
e-mail or voicemail.

In a straight and concise definition for the purposes of this English language article, text
messaging by phones or mobile phones should include all 26 letters of the alphabet and 10
numerals, i.e., alpha-numeric messages, or text, to be sent by texter or received by the textee.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Uses

3 Applications
o

3.1 Microblogging

3.2 Emergency services

3.3 Reminders of hospital appointments

3.4 Commercial uses

3.4.1 Short codes

3.4.2 Text messaging gateway providers

3.4.3 Premium content

3.5 In business

3.6 Online SMS Services

3.7 Worldwide use

3.7.1 Europe

3.7.1.1 Finland

3.7.2 United States

3.7.3 Japan

3.7.4 China

3.7.5 Philippines

3.7.6 New Zealand

3.7.7 Africa

4 Social impact
o

4.1 Effect on language

4.2 Texting while driving

4.3 Texting while walking

4.4 Sexting

4.5 In schools

4.5.1 Bullying

4.5.2 Influence on perceptions of the student

4.6 Law and crime

4.7 Social unrest

4.8 Texting in politics

4.9 Use in healthcare

4.10 Medical concerns

4.11 Texting etiquette

5 Challenges
o

5.1 Text message spam

5.2 Pricing concerns

5.3 Increasing competition

5.4 Security concerns

6 Text messaging in popular culture

o

6.1 Records and competition

6.2 Morse code

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
In 1933 RCA Communications, New York introduced the first "telex" service.[1] The first messages
over RCA transatlantic circuits were sent between New York and London. Seven million words or
300,000 radiograms transmitted the first year.[citation needed] Alphanumeric messages have long been sent
by radio using via Radiotelegraphy.[2] Digital information began being sent using radio as early as
1971 by the University of Hawaii using ALOHAnet.[citation needed]
The concept of the SMS (Short Messaging Service) was created by Friedhelm Hillebrand, while he
was working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random
sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation, and space. Almost every time, the
messages amounted to 160 characters, thus being the basis for the limit one could type via text.
[3]

With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Tlcom, he developed a proposal for the GSM group meeting

in February 1985 in Oslo.[4] The first technical solution was developed in a GSM subgroup under the
leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian
Harris (see Wikipedia: Short Message Service).[5]
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old
test engineer for Sema Group in the UK[6] (now Airwide Solutions),[7] used a personal computer to
send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis[8]
[9]

who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire which had been organised to celebrate the event.

Modern SMS text messaging is understood to be messaging from one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. Radiolinja became the first network to offer commercial person-to-person SMS text
messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland (now part of
TeliaSonera) also launched SMS text messaging in 1995 and the two networks offered crossnetwork SMS functionality, Finland became the first nation where SMS text messaging was offered
as a competitive as well as commercial basis.[citation needed]
The first text messaging service in the United States was provided by American Personal
Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a
partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. The
Sprint venture was the largest single buyer at a government-run spectrum auction that raised $7.7
billion in 2005 for PCS licenses. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and
launched service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The initial
call to launch the network was made from Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. to Mayor Kurt
Schmoke in Baltimore.[10] Soon to follow was Omnipoint Communications.[11] Omnipoint's George
Schmitt, a former Airtouch executive[12] who launched commercial GSM in Germany, recruited Roger
Wood[13] from competitor iDEN / Nextel led a team that introduced texting as a commercial service in
New York City in November 1996.[9] In preparation for the company's launch party in New York's

Central Park, Wood and co-worker Mark Caron[14] sent the first SMS Text message of "George are
you there?" to Schmitt during a Sunday morning RF drive test on October 20, 1996. Omnipoint soon
offered the first texting between the U.S. and the rest of the world.[15] The tipping point for text
messaging was the 1998 marketing plan conceived by Wood which encouraged consumers to use
texting as the primary way to communicate with their home countries while traveling overseas
instead of calling home.[16] This positioning set the stage for text messaging as the primary means of
contact between two or more people not in their home countries. [17]
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
message per GSM customer per month.[18] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators
were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud,
which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other
operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and
by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through
it.[citation needed]
SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include JPhone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail, both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as
popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIMBlackBerry, also typically use standard mail
protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.[19]
Today, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide, or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers, at end of 2007 being active users
of the Short Message Service. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the
population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up
with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by
mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines, with an average of 27 texts sent per day by
subscriber.

Uses[edit]

An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable.
Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of appliances. It is
widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (s