Billions of text messages are sent everyday. SMS (Short Message Service) is a contemporary phenomenon based on the increased use and necessity of the mobile/cellular phone. In the early 1980’s visionaries saw the potential and begun the process of standardizing wireless communication.

The GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) was developed to allow mobile communication across multiple platforms throughout Europe. The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) created the Groupe Special Mobile, which became known as the GSM, with the objective of creating a standardized system. Working with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute the GSM and SMS standards were developed. The 3GPP is now responsible for the Standards further development and maintenance. The system that was created, quickly became the most widely used standard with 2 billion people on the system. The wide use of a standard meant that roaming was made extremely easy. Visit this site for maps of where you can roam with your GSM compatible cellphone.

SMS is a technology that facilitates the sending and receiving of messages between mobile phones. Short Message Service is self defining: it is a message with up to 160 characters at 7-bit encoding for Latin characters, and 70 characters at 16-bit Unicode encoding for non-Latin characters. Each transmission is capable of containing a 140 bytes. Though that is not a tremendous amount of information that can be sent, the information is able to be sent in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Korean. SMS can also handle binary data, such as pictures, ringtones, logos, wallpapers, animations and business cards. It is also supported by a 100% of GSM mobile phones.

EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service) is an application-level extension of SMS. A SMS message is unable to transmit rich-media content –pictures, animations and melodies- so EMS was developed as a response to this SMS limitation. EMS allows the user to control certain font features, but is limited in this use by the inability of available handheld wireless components to support certain EMS features. EMS is also limited because it is not nearly as widely supported as SMS. This limitation greatly effects its use worldwide.

The success of SMS comes down to a couple of key selling points. For business looking for ways to expand their product's availability SMS is an ideal tool to reach the growing number of individuals that carry mobile phones. Not only is SMS on 100% of GSM phones, but it crosses language barriers with ease. The key success of SMS as it is applied in commerce is the ability to reverse bill for services.

To buy a ringtone for example, the user writes an ordinary SMS text message that contains the ID of the ringtone he/she wants to buy and then sends it to the SMS application's reverse billing phone number. The seller’s SMS application will then send back one or more reverse billing SMS messages that carry the ringtone. The user will be charged a fee for the reverse billing SMS messages he/she received. The fee will be included in the user's monthly mobile phone bill or be deducted from his/her prepaid card credits.

It is easy to see why business finds SMS advantageous.

The services available because of SMS continue to grow. When SMS was still in the GSM committee the original idea for SMS was that it would be a great tool for alerts and important notifications in the public sector. From this singular beginning the array of services offered increased to the current level of notification for such things as emails, credit card transactions, stock market reports, alarm system monitoring, data system monitoring, and database searches that can include restaurants and queries like dictionaries and sport trivia.

One of the extraordinary qualities that SMS brings to the individuals user’s world is its functionality across languages. Whether one is writing in Kanji, Semitic languages, Indo-European tongues or Chinese SMS can be used to benefit the user.