Short Message Service (SMS)

The SMS is one of the most remarkably successful mobile services. The standardization
of SMS in the late 1980s was not a case of serendipity, as is sometimes
believed. The creators of the standard did envision it as a potentially interesting
service for GSM users from the outset, they just did not think it would be as successful
as it is today.
SMS was originally specified as an add-on service for GSM, but clearly of
less importance than the GSM fax and data services. Reality completely turned
things upside down, and made SMS the most important nonvoice service for
GSM.
Short messages are routed in the fixed network as MAP signaling messages
and delivered on signaling channels on the radio interface. The reason for choosing
MAP for routing short messages, as opposed to a dedicated data network, is
that some of the new mobile operators simply had no data network infrastructure
at the time. This choice proved to be crucial for the success of SMS, as MAP
guarantees complete SMS interoperability between all GSM operators. The
Transactional Capabilities Application Part (TCAP)/MAP protocol, however,
also imposed a maximum message length of 160 characters. The success of the
SMS and its limited message size are two faces of the same coin.
Another key to the success of SMS is its store-forward feature. You cannot
set up a call to a disconnected mobile phone, but you can send a message to it.
The message is stored until the mobile attaches to the network. This nonsynchronous
communication proved to be a very valuable complement to the synchronous
voice telephony service. The GSM network, however, did not foresee
store-forward functionality, and so the notion of a short message service center
(SMSC) had to be added in the standards.
SMS is one of the very few telecommunications services that has not experienced
a sharp decline in price. SMS is an expensive service if one considers the
price per byte transported.
Short messaging is widely used from mobile to mobile and for interperson
communications, but it is also an extremely interesting enabler for third-party
services. In this section we concentrate on the B2C aspect of SMS.