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Why Text Messages Are Limited To 160 Characters
The LA Times has a story about Friedhelm Hillebrand, one of the communications researchers behind efforts to standardize various cell phone technologies. In particular, he worked out the 160 character limit for text messages.
"Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper. As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters. That became Hillebrand's magic number ... Looking for a data pipeline that would fit these micro messages, Hillebrand came up with the idea to harness a secondary radio channel that already existed on mobile networks. This smaller data lane had been used only to alert a cellphone about reception strength and to supply it with bits of information regarding incoming calls. ... Initially, Hillebrand's team could fit only 128 characters into that space, but that didn't seem like nearly enough. With a little tweaking and a decision to cut down the set of possible letters, numbers and symbols that the system could represent, they squeezed out room for another 32 characters.
The real question should be "Why are we still using ancient text messages instead of regular email?" All of my friends in Japan regularly do full-on email on their phones, and only have a vague-if-any notion of what a regular "text message" is elsewhere. 160-character limit? That is *so* 1990s.
The article states outright that the 160-character limit came before Hillebrand's "typewriter experiment", and that the experiment actually about because of an argument between Hillebrand and a coworker about whether 160 characters was sufficient for a sensible message. This meshes with what we already know about SMS, namely that it could never have been much more than 128 characters for technical reasons. Quite why the article structures its opening to suggest that Hillebrand pulled the number out of his arse after some typewriter time is a mystery.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You might want to make two posts next time. Character count with space = 208.
/dev/null. I occasionally get cranky about it and send off a series of single-sentence emails, with the query in the sentence line.
Don't start me. I know any number of supposedly intelligent people who are apparently incapable of reading a simple email containing a series of questions or points.
They will respond to the first question, but anything after that is consigned to
I don't know whether it's my circle of acquaintances, but the worst offenders seem to be MBAs. (Maybe it really does mean Master of Bugger-All). Or maybe it's just the Simpsonisation of society that gives it the attention span of a flea.
My 17 yr old (mostly stupid) step-daughter
That remark gives me a far more negative opinion of you than of her.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The CB App. What's your 20?
>>>The cost is zero to the telcos, but the profit is gravy. It is a complete rip-off scam to the consumer.
I disagree. The retail cost is whatever the market will bear. This idea goes all the way back to John Smith, and is not necessarily tied to the actual cost of the good. You might call it a "ripoff" but it's a ripoff that customers *voluntarily* enter into. They could just as easily decide not to do texting (as I do).
The flip-side of this is that money collected from all these texters helps subsidize my (and your) voice calls. I pay just 18 cents a minute, which is a real bargain considering wired phone calls in 1990 used to be 25 cents a minute. Simple inflation says the price should have increased to 45 cents, but instead prices have dropped and with the added benefit of being wireless. Without texting the voice calls would have to be significantly higher in order to cover the maintenance/electricity costs.
Anyway it could be worse.
The cellphone company could be run by Congress (like Amtrak).
In which case you wouldn't have a choice;
instead they'd suck the money from your paycheck.
With today's private companies I can choose to buy or not buy, text or not text, make calls or not make calls. I control my own destiny and how much I want to spend (or not spend).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I disagree. The retail cost is whatever the market will bear. This idea goes all the way back to John Smith, and is not necessarily tied to the actual cost of the good.
I think you mean Adam Smith, and I think you're misreading the GP. Cost != price. The retail price is whatever the market will bear, but the cost of providing SMS service is virtually zero.
You might call it a "ripoff" but it's a ripoff that customers *voluntarily* enter into. They could just as easily decide not to do texting (as I do).
It's awfully glib to say we shouldn't be upset about being ripped off just because we have a choice. In a free market, with healthy competition, the price of goods and services should fall to just above their actual cost. That obviously isn't happening with SMS: customers would like to pay less, but no one is offering SMS for less, even though it costs almost nothing to provide. Doesn't that suggest a market failure?
Anyway it could be worse.
The cellphone company could be run by Congress (like Amtrak).
In which case you wouldn't have a choice;
instead they'd suck the money from your paycheck.
Or perhaps it could be run like the US Postal Service, in which case it would provide world-class service at a far lower price than any of its competitors. The USPS will carry a physical envelope from my doorstep to someone else's doorstep, thousands of miles away, for less than the price of 3 text messages.
(I'm not saying we should nationalize cellular companies - just pointing out that services set up by the government aren't inherently inefficient as you seem to be implying.)
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