Text messaging
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile phones, tablet computers, smartwatches, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network or may also be sent via satellite or Internet connection.
The term originally referred to messages sent using the Short Message Service on mobile devices. It has grown beyond alphanumeric text to include multimedia messages using the Multimedia Messaging Service and Rich Communication Services, which can contain digital images, videos, and sound content, as well as ideograms known as emoji, and on various instant messaging apps. Text messaging has been an extremely popular medium of communication since the turn of the century and has also influenced changes in society.
Overview
Text messages are used for personal, family, work, business, and social purposes. In the 21st century, the sending of short informal messages became mainstream and an accepted part of many cultures, as happened earlier with emailing. Texting is a quick and easy way to communicate with friends, family, and colleagues, including in contexts where a call would be impolite or inappropriate. Like e-mail and voicemail, and unlike calls, texting does not require the caller and recipient to both be available at the same moment; this permits communication between busy individuals. Text messages can also be used to interact with automated systems, for example, to order products or services from e-commerce websites or to participate in online contests. Advertisers and service providers use direct text marketing to send messages to mobile users about things like promotions and order status, instead of using postal mail, email, or voicemail.History
The electrical telegraph systems, developed in the early 19th century, used electrical signals to send text messages. In the late 19th century, wireless telegraphy was developed using radio waves.In 1933, the German Reichspost introduced the first "telex" service.
The University of Hawaii began using radio to send digital information as early as 1971, using ALOHAnet.
Friedhelm Hillebrand conceptualised SMS in 1984 while working for Deutsche Telekom. Sitting at a typewriter at home, Hillebrand typed out random sentences and counted every letter, number, punctuation mark, and space. Almost every time, the messages contained fewer than 160 characters, thus giving the basis for the limit that one could type via text messaging. With Bernard Ghillebaert of France Télécom, he developed a proposal for the GSM meeting in February 1985 in Oslo. The first technical solution evolved in a GSM subgroup under the leadership of Finn Trosby. It was further developed under the leadership of Kevin Holley and Ian Harris. SMS forms an integral part of Signalling System No. 7. Under SS7, it is a "state" with 160 characters of data, coded in the ITU-T "T.56" text format, that has a "sequence lead in" to determine different language codes and may have special character codes that permit, for example, sending simple graphs as text. This was part of ISDN, and since GSM is based on this, it made its way to the mobile phone. Messages could be sent and received on ISDN phones, and these can send SMS to any GSM phone. The possibility of doing something is one thing; implementing it is another, but systems existed in 1988 that sent SMS messages to mobile phones.
SMS messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer, used a computer to send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis, who was at a party in Newbury, Berkshire celebrating the event. Papworth later said, "it didn't feel momentous at all". Modern SMS text messaging is usually sent from one mobile phone to another. Finnish Radiolinja became the first network to offer a commercial person-to-person SMS text messaging service in 1994. When Radiolinja's domestic competitor, Telecom Finland, 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 on a competitive as well as a commercial basis. GSM was allowed in the United States, but the radio frequencies were blocked and awarded to US "Carriers" to use US technology, which limited development of mobile messaging services in the US. The GSM in the US had to use a frequency allocated for private communication services – what the ITU frequency régime had blocked for DECT – a 1,000-foot range picocell, but it survived. American Personal Communications, the first GSM carrier in America, provided the first text-messaging service in the United States. 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 Sprint Spectrum and launched its service on 15 November 1995, in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C., made the initial phone call to launch the network, calling Mayor Kurt Schmoke in Baltimore.
Initial growth of text messaging worldwide was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0,4 messages per GSM customer per month. One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and to 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 that allowed the blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through them. SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text-messaging systems use SMS; some notable alternate implementations of the concept include J-Phone'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 RIM BlackBerry, also typically use standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP., text messaging was 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, being active users of the Short Message Service at the end of 2007. In countries such as Finland, Sweden, and Norway, over 85% of the population used SMS. The European average was about 80%, and North America was rapidly catching up, with over 60% active users of SMS.
Uses
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. Texting is also used to communicate very brief messages, such as informing someone that you will be late or reminding a friend or colleague about a meeting. As with e-mail, informality and brevity have become an accepted part of text messaging. Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote control of home appliances. It is widely used in domotics systems. Some amateurs have also built their own systems to control their appliances via SMS. A Flash SMS is a type of text message that appears directly on the main screen without user interaction and is not automatically stored in the inbox. It can be useful in cases such as an emergency or confidentiality.SMS has historically been particularly popular in Europe, Asia, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, while also gaining influence in Africa. Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term texting has entered the common lexicon. In 2012, young Asians considered SMS as the most popular mobile phone application. In the same year, 50 percent of American teens send 50 text messages or more per day, making it their most frequent form of communication. In 2004 in China, SMS was very popular and brought service providers significant profit.
It has been an influential tool in the Philippines, where in 2008, the average user sent 10–12 text messages a day. The same year, the Philippines alone sent, on average, over 1 billion text messages a day, more than the annual average SMS volume of European countries, China and India.
Similarly, in 2008, text messaging played a primary role in the implication of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in an SMS sex scandal. Short messages are particularly popular among young urbanites. In many markets, the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia, a message typically costs between A$0.20 and $0.25 to send, compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere between $0.40 and $2.00 per minute. The service is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of only 190 bytes, more than 350 of these messages per minute can be transmitted at the same data rate as a usual voice call. There are also free SMS services available, which are often sponsored, that allow sending and receiving SMS from a PC connected to the Internet. Mobile service providers in New Zealand, such as One NZ and Spark New Zealand, provided up to 2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month. Users on these plans sent on average 1500 SMS messages every month. Text messaging became so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers jumped into the text messaging business. Services that provide bulk text message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to reach a group of opt-in subscribers quickly.
In 2013, research suggested that Internet-based mobile messaging would grow to equal the popularity of SMS by the end of 2013, with nearly 10 trillion messages being sent through each technology. Services such as Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp, Signal, Snapchat, Telegram, and Viber have led to a decline in the use of SMS in parts of the world. A survey conducted by MetrixLabs showed that 63% of Baby Boomers, 63% of Generation X, and 67% of Generation Y said that they used instant messengers in place of texting. A Facebook survey showed that 65% of people surveyed thought that messaging applications made group messaging easier.