Text Messaging

Text messaging, also known as "texting", refers to the exchange of brief written messages between mobile phones over cellular networks. While the term most often refers to messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS), it has been extended to include messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). Individual messages are referred to as "text messages" or "texts".

The most common application of the service is person-to-person messaging, but text messages are also used to interact with automated systems, such as ordering products and services for mobile phones, or participating in contests. Advertisers and service providers use texts to notify mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates, and other notifications that used to be sent by post or left as voicemail. There are internet services available that allow users to send text messages free of direct charge to the sender.

History

Many companies claim to have sent the very first text message, but according to a former employee of NASA, Edward Lantz, the first was sent via a simple Motorola beeper in 1989 by Raina Fortini from New York City to Melbourne Beach, Florida using upside down numbers that could be read as words and sounds.

Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 messages per GSM customer per month.[1] One factor in the slow take-up 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 per user reached 35.[citation needed]

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

Today text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone users worldwide or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers at end of 2007 being active users of the Short Message Service. In countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway over 85% of the population use SMS. The European average is about 80% and North America is rapidly catching up with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the service by mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines with an average of 27 texts sent per day by subscriber. In Singapore the average is 12 and in South Korea 10.[citation needed]

Text messaging was reported to have addictive tendencies by the Global Messaging Survey by Nokia in 2001 and was confirmed to be addictive by the study at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 2004. Since then the study at the University of Queensland in Australia has found that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or internet, and is equivalent in addictiveness to cigarette smoking[citation needed]. The text reception habit introduces a need to remain connected, called "Reachability".

Uses

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable. In some regions, text messaging is significantly cheaper than placing a phone call to another mobile phone; elsewhere, text messaging is popular despite the negligible cost of voice calls.

Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world. In 2000, just 17 billion SMS messages were sent; in 2001, the number was up to 250 billion, and 500 billion SMS messages in 2004, which represents close to 100 text messages for every person in the world.[citation needed] At an average cost of USD 0.10 per message,[citation needed] this generates revenues in excess of $50 billion for mobile telephone operators.

SMS is particularly popular in the Europe, Asia (excluding Japan; see below), Australia and New Zealand. Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term texting (used as a verb meaning the act of mobile phone users sending short messages back and forth) has entered the common lexicon. Young Asians consider SMS as the most popular mobile phone application.[3]

In China, SMS is very popular, and has brought service providers significant profit (18 billion short messages were sent in 2001).[4] It is a very influential and powerful tool in the Philippines, where the average user sends 10-12 text messages a day. The Philippines alone sends on the average 400 million text messages a day or approximately 142 billion text messages sent a year,[5] more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, and even China and India. It is said that the Philippines is the "texting capital of the world". SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores update, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS.

In 2001, text messaging played an important role in deposing former Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Similarly, in 2008, text messaging played a primary role in the implication of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in an SMS sex scandal.[6]

Short messages are particularly popular amongst young urbanites. In many markets, the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia a message typically costs between AUD 0.20 and AUD 0.25 to send (some pre-paid services charge AUD 0.01 between their own phones), compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere between AUD 0.40 and AUD 2.00 per minute (commonly charged in half-minute blocks). Despite the low cost to the consumer, the service is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of only 190 bytes (incl. protocol overhead), more than 350 of these messages per minute can be transmitted at the same data rate as a usual voice call (9 kbit/s).

Mobile Service Providers in New Zealand, such as Vodafone and Boost Mobile, provide up to 2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month. Users on these plans send on average 1500 SMS messages every month.

Text messaging has become so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers are now jumping into the text message business. Services that provide bulk text message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to quickly reach a group of opt-in subscribers. This advertising has proven to be extremely effective, but some insiders[weasel words] worry that advertisers may abuse the power of mobile marketing and it will someday be considered spam.