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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."

7 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. 20 years later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And they still charge over $1000/MB for SMS.

    1. Re:20 years later... by lobiusmoop · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "'SMS is the closest thing to pure profit ever invented" - Sir Chris Gent, founder of Vodafone.
      (from here)

      --
      "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
    2. 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.

  2. Re:all on GSM? by Hian+Bosu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not really, most developing countries bypass the entire analogue mobile stage and go straight to digital.

  3. Re:ugly abomination by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    But enough about cowboy Neil

  4. Re:all on GSM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    GSM is nearly ubiquitous in developing countries. I've been to a significant number of 3rd world (and 2nd) and GSM has been the prevailing standard with an occasional CDMA set showing up.

  5. 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).