SMS turns 30: Rise, Fall & Rise again?
The first SMS was sent 30 years ago – although messaging services have outgrown this, the technology is still in use. A look at the past and the future. Historians are still debating who came up with the pioneering idea of using unused mobile network resources to send and receive SMS messages. Experts agree that the first viable Short Message Service (SMS) concept came from Federal Postmaster Friedhelm Hillebrand in 1985.
British software developer Neil Papworth managed to send the world’s first SMS on behalf of Vodafone. 30 years ago, on December 3, 1992, he experimented with a new transmission technology. Papworth sent the famous 14 “Congratulations” letters from his computer to Vodafone CEO Richard Jarvis’ cell phone.
The Mobile Communication Industry has made good profits by sending SMS
The new service went commercial 15 months later at the CeBIT 1994 computer fair in Hanover. From today’s perspective, the prices were exorbitant. Initially, each SMS cost 39 cents, with the introduction of the euro, 19 cents became the normal price for an SMS – a discount of five or six cents per SMS was offered. The Short Message Service has evolved into the cash cow of the industry.
The record: 60 Billion Text Messages Sent in 2012
Already in 1998, the limit of one billion text messages sent was crossed in Germany for the first time. After that it continued quickly. The record was reached in 2012 with nearly 60 billion text messages sent.
The SMS boom has brought billions in profits into the coffers of telecom service providers. But it has also changed the way young people, in particular, communicate with each other.
Enter text for SMS via numeric Keypad
At the time, entering text was cumbersome compared to today’s smartphones: there was no keyboard with letters, just numbers from “0” to “9”, “*” and “#”. Each number has several letters assigned to it. For example, if you wanted to type the letter f, you would press the “3” key three times in a row.
These circumstances promoted abbreviated terms still used by some in WhatsApp and Co. Within today. “hdg” means “I like you” or “GN8” for goodnight.
What will the future of SMS look like?
Meanwhile, only few people use SMS in their private or professional communication. The number of text messages sent in Germany reached seven billion in 2020. However, in 2021, the Federal Network Agency recorded a slight increase to 7.8 billion for the first time.
The industry draws hope from this, for example Vodafone Technical Director Tanja Richter:
SMS was an innovation 30 years ago, but it has not yet become part of technology history: it will be with us for many years to come.
The small advantage is related to the fact that SMS is often used in applications such as online banking to send transaction numbers via a mobile phone. However, texting will no longer generate billions of dollars in revenue because online messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram reign supreme.
No encryption when “sending text messages”
In the era before Whatsapp and Co. SMS was not only popular with young people. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (born 1954) frequently communicated with other politicians via text messages, as former Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (FDP) explained to the Black and Yellow Alliance in 2010: “We send messages from text as much as we can”.
The word “simsen” for sending and receiving text messages was added to the dictionary in 2004. They also agreed on the risks of protecting data from eavesdropping. SMS messages are still not encrypted today.