The Short Message Service or SMS is the most commonly used means of communication now. This feature is found in cellular phones and other hand-held devices. The basic premise is composing a message using keypad and sending the message to the number of the recipient. This text messaging service has 2.4 billion active users sending and receiving messages on their mobile handsets.

The SMS for modern handsets was part of the standards of GSM series in 1985 for sending messages of up to 160 characters involving spaces from and to GSM mobile phones. Here is a more technical in-depth about the SMS technology.

The Short Message Service Point to Point or SMS-PP is stated in GSM recommendation 03.40. However, the GSM 03.41 states the SMS Cell Broadcast or SMS-CB. This permits messages from public information and advertising to be publicized to all mobile users in a particular geographical area.

However, the messages are sent to a Short Message Service Center or SMSC. It gives a ‘save and send’ mechanism. It enables messages to be propelled to their receivers. The SMSC sets the message for future sending when it is not received.

The SMSC also features attempting to send the message only once. The Mobile Terminated or MT for messages has been delivered to a mobile phone while the Mobile Originating or MO for those that are delivered from the mobile phone where operations is monitored.

The sending of message is processed great, therefore a message will actually be sent to its receiver. Furthermore, the delay or totally disappearance of a message is not uncommon specifically when transmitting between networks.

The short messages can be encoded through a number of alphabets. These are the default GSM 7-alphabet bit, the 16-bit UTF-16 or UCS-2 alphabet, and the 8-bit data alphabet. The older mobile phone units only have a capacity of 160 characters per text message. But newer models have already increased significantly this capacity by at least 200%.

The GSM 7-bit alphabet’s ability is compulsory for GSM mobile phones and network elements. However, characters in languages like Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, or Cyrillic alphabet languages should be encoded through the 16-bit UCS-2 character encoding.

The SMS gateway providers help the SMS traffic between mobile subscribers and businesses. They are responsible for bringing SMS for enterprises, mission-critical messages, content transfusion and entertainment services including SMS like TV voting.

Through satellite feeds, SMS messages are sent from one phone to another. These satellite networks are owned by telecommunication networks. All messages go through the SMSC ((Short Message Service Center) before being thrown to the recipient.

This whole process is so fast and efficient that it only takes a fraction of a second. This is why text messaging is known to be done in real time. The recipient receives the message almost at the same time that the sender pressed the send button. Of course, the discrepancy also varies according to the efficiency of the network and the mobile phone itself.

In most mobile phones, text messaging is limited to 160 characters only. If some mobile phones are upgraded to more than 160 characters, rest assured that a message of more than this limit will be charged extra. The reason behind this is that text messaging is supposed to be short (hence, short messaging service). This avoids overloading a system or clogging the networks unnecessarily.