Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

20 Years of GSM and SMS

Posted by timothy on from the grudgingly-admit-sms-is-useful dept.

udas writes "Two thirds of the world's population, 4 billion people, use cell phones today, and all of them have access to SMS. Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM), set up in 1982, created the GSM standard, leading to a unified, open, standard-based mobile network. SMS, up to 160 7-bit character messages sent over control channels (when they aren't busy), was part of the original GSM specification itself. The first GSM handsts were approved for sale in May 1992. But it was not until 1996, when pay-as-you-go SIM cards showed up, and the kids got their hands on it, that SMS gained popularity."

5 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. ugly abomination by mapkinase · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ugly, overpriced abomination that should die, die, die.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
    1. Re:ugly abomination by Valacity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ugly, overpriced abomination that should die, die, die.

      Why kill it? It's one more tax on idiocy. Idiots are paying our providers.

      Oh yes, because everyone else is an idiot. It's good we have Thansin, who is not an idiot, because what would we do otherwise.

      Look, not everything is priced at the lowest point compared to other services like the internet. Yes, per megabyte price for SMS is huge. But who the fuck tries to transfer data with it anyway? On top of that most people have unlimited SMS with their plans now. Even without that SMS price isn't that high and it was very convenient.

      By the way, SMS was also developed by Nokia engineers, accidentally actually. Just shows how much groundwork Nokia has done for mobiles and that they actually deserve every patent they have (most of which they've given for free use anyway).

  2. Re:20 years later... by AbRASiON · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is about 15 different companies offering their own messaging systems "for free" - some even offering VOIP calls.

    These insidious packages take a copy of all your friends as well and match you up against them, awful things - also never is everyone you know on it, ever.
    I hate to yet again give Apple credit but building the imessage system into the iphone is brilliant and I sincerely hope Google copy the concept with far far better Google talk integration into the Android OS (frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't been patched in NOW)

    Nice of the 3'rd parties to offer this but I'm just not interested unless it's seamless (which, to my knowledge imessage is? if it can imessage, it will - if not, defaults to SMS, seamlessly, right?)

  3. Re:20 years later... by Albanach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate to yet again give Apple credit but building the imessage system into the iphone is brilliant and I sincerely hope Google copy the concept with far far better Google talk integration into the Android OS (frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't been patched in NOW)

    The reason SMS remains popular is because it just works. I can text someone in Kansas or Kenya and the message gets there, whatever brand of phone the end user is holding.

    Why credit Apple for another move at vendor lock-in. Apple have enough sway with their iPhone that they could have made their messaging system an open and interoperable standard.

  4. Re:20 years later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's something to be said for asynchronous communication. Case in point - you're reading this at your leisure, at some point in time after I posted it, rather than reading reading it live as I type.