Link: Telco 2.0: Happy Birthday, SMS.
The first SMS “text message” is reputed to have been sent in 1992 by a UK mobile network engineer to his colleagues, wishing them (in capital letters) MERRY CHRISTMAS.
This message was sent from a PC to mobile phones, and it was not until early 1993 that the first handset to handset message was sent – by a Finnish engineering student within Nokia.
But by then, some European mobile operators had already spotted an opportunity; they were in the process of equipping themselves to be able to offer SMS as a commercial messaging service (albeit a niche one, as they thought at the time, and one that for a while they didn’t think to charge for).
In 1992 Aldiscon and CMG, both later bought by Logica, and now Acision, secured contracts for development and deployment of the Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) intended for commercial use. Both SMSC’s were deployed in 1993 at BT Cellnet, now O2, and Telenor respectively.
Despite this early start, the first couple of years saw only slow uptake of the service, and it was not until 1999 that interoperability between the operators enabled users to send messages across networks.
However its initial pricing (free!) helped SMS establish itself as a good alternative to the still-expensive mobile call, and as mobile phones found their way into the pockets of the youth market it became the obvious medium for their seemingly inexhaustible communication habits.
Bella storia, tutta da leggere!
Interessante il dato sui ricavi generati dagli SMS: largamente superiori alla musica o ai film!
