Initial concept

The idea of adding text messaging to the services of mobile users was latent in many communities of mobile communication services at the beginning of the 1980s. The first action plan of the CEPT Group GSM, approved in December 1982, requested “The services and facilities offered in the public switched telephone networks and public data networks… should be available in the mobile system”.This target includes the exchange of text messages either directly between mobile stations, or transmitted via Message Handling Systems widely in use since the beginning of the 1980s.

The SMS concept was developed in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert and Oculy Silaban.The innovation in SMS is Short. The GSM is optimized for telephony, since this was identified as its main application. The key idea for SMS was to use this telephony-optimized system, and to transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephony traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. In this way, unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages at minimal cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages to 128 bytes (later improved to 140 bytes, or 160 7-bit characters), so that the messages could fit into the existing signaling formats.

This concept allowed SMS to be implemented in every mobile station, by updating its software. This concept was instrumental for the implementation of SMS in every mobile station ever produced and in every network from early days. Hence, a large base of SMS capable terminals and networks existed when the users began to utilize the SMS.A new network element required was a specialized Short Message Service Center, and enhancements were required to the radio capacity and network transport infrastructure to accommodate growing SMS traffic.

Early development

The technical development of SMS was a multinational collaboration supporting the framework of standards bodies, and through these organizations the technology was made freely available to the whole world. This is described and supported by evidence in the following sections.

The first proposal which initiated the development of SMS was made by a contribution of Germany and France into the GSM group meeting in February 1985 in Oslo. This proposal was further elaborated in GSM subgroup WP1 Services (Chairman Martine Alvernhe, France Telecom) based on a contribution from Germany. There were also initial discussions in the subgroup WP3 network aspects chaired by Jan Audestad (Telenor). The result was approved by the main GSM group in a June ’85 document which was distributed to industry. The input documents on SMS had been prepared by Friedhelm Hillebrand (Deutsche Telekom) with contributions from Bernard Ghillebaert (France Télécom).

SMS was considered in the main GSM group as a possible service for the new digital cellular system. In GSM document “Services and Facilities to be provided in the GSM System”, both mobile-originated and mobile-terminated short messages appear on the table of GSM teleservices.

The discussions on the GSM services were concluded in the recommendation GSM 02.03 “TeleServices supported by a GSM PLMN”. Here a rudimentary description of the three services was given:

1. Short message Mobile Terminated (SMS-MT)/ Point-to-Point: the ability of a network to transmit a Short Message to a mobile phone. The message can be sent by phone or by a software application.

2. Short message Mobile Originated (SMS-MO)/ Point-to-Point: the ability of a network to transmit a Short Message sent by a mobile phone. The message can be sent to a phone or to a software application.

3. Short message Cell Broadcast.

The material elaborated in GSM and its WP1 subgroup was handed over in Spring 1987 to a new GSM body called IDEG (the Implementation of Data and Telematic Services Experts Group), which had its kickoff in May 1987 under the chairmanship of Friedhelm Hillebrand (German Telecom). The technical standard known today was largely created by IDEG (later WP4) as the two recommendations GSM 03.40 (the two point-to-point services merged together) and GSM 03.41 (cell broadcast).

WP4 created a Drafting Group Message Handling (DGMH), which was responsible for the specification of SMS. It was chaired by Finn Trosby (Telenor). DGMH had about five to eight participants (Finn Trosby mentions as a contributor Alan Cox of Vodafone). The first action plan mentions for the first time the Technical Specification 03.40 “Technical realisation of the Short Message Service”. Responsible editor was Finn Trosby. The first draft of the technical specification was completed in November 1987.

The work on the draft specification continued in the following few years, where Kevin Holley of Cellnet (now Telefonica O2 UK) played a leading role. Besides the completion of the main specification GSM 03.40, the detailed protocol specifications on the system interfaces also needed to be completed.

Support in other architectures

The Mobile Application Part (MAP) of the SS7 protocol included support for the transport of Short Messages through the Core Network from its inception. MAP Phase 2 expanded support for SMS by introducing a separate operation code for Mobile Terminated Short Message transport. Since Phase 2, there have been no changes to the Short Message operation packages in MAP, although other operation packages have been enhanced to support CAMEL SMS control.

From 3GPP Releases 99 and 4 onwards, CAMEL Phase 3 introduced the ability for the Intelligent Network (IN) to control aspects of the Mobile Originated Short Message Service, while CAMEL Phase 4, as part of 3GPP Release 5 and onwards, provides the IN with the ability to control the Mobile Terminated service. CAMEL allows the gsmSCP to block the submission (MO) or delivery (MT) of Short Messages, route messages to destinations other than that specified by the user, and perform real-time billing for the use of the service. Prior to standardized CAMEL control of the Short Message Service, IN control relied on switch vendor specific extensions to the Intelligent Network Application Part (INAP) of SS7.

Early implementations

The first SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992, from Neil Papworth of Sema Group (now Airwide Solutions) using a personal computer to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone using an Orbitel 901 handset. The text of the message was “Happy Christmas”.

The first commercial deployment of a Short Message Service Center (SMSC) was by Aldiscon (now Acision) with TeliaSonera in Sweden in 1993[21], followed by Fleet Call (now Nextel) in the US, Telenor in Norway and BT Cellnet (now O2 UK) later in 1993. All first installations of SMS gateways were for network notifications sent to mobile phones, usually to inform of voice mail messages. The first commercially sold SMS service was offered to consumers, as a person-to-person text messaging service by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa) in 1993. It should be noted that most early GSM mobile phone handsets did not support the ability to send SMS text messages, and Nokia was the only handset manufacturer whose total GSM phone line in 1993 supported user-sending of SMS text messages.

Initial growth was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 messages per GSM customer per month. One factor in the slow takeup 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. By the end of 2000, the average number of messages reached 35 per user per month, and by Christmas Day 2006, over 205 million messages were sent in the UK alone.

It is also alleged that the fact that roaming customers, in the early days, rarely received bills for their SMSs after holidays abroad had a boost on text messaging as an alternative to voice calls.

Text messaging outside GSM

SMS was originally designed as part of GSM, but is now available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternative implementations of the concept include J-Phone’s SkyMail and NTT Docomo’s Short Mail, both in Japan. Email messaging from phones, as popularized by NTT Docomo’s i-mode and the RIM BlackBerry, also typically uses standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.

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