Complete Guide To Short Messeging Service

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Customer Usage and Market Growth

• SMS Volumes per European Market
  
• Network Operator Message Quantities and Growth

3. SMS Messaging Milestones

1. FIRST GENERATION SMS CENTRE
2. VOICE MAIL NOTIFICATION AND SMS MOBILE TERMINATE
3. SMS MOBILE ORIGINATE
4. EMAIL
5. INFORMATION SERVICES
6. BUSINESS PARTNERS PROGRAM
7. SECOND GENERATION SMS CENTER
8. NATIONAL SMS INTERWORKING
9. SMS FOR PREPAYMENT
10. PREDICTIVE TEXT INPUT PHONES
11. STANDARDIZED PROTOCOLS E.G. WAP
12. TERMINAL DEVELOPMENTS E.G. SMART, HANDHELD COMPUTERS

4. SMS Roaming

• NATIONAL SMS INTERWORKING
  
• INTERNATIONAL SMS ROAMING

5. SMS Phone Features

6. The Future of SMS- Introducing the Long Message Service

1. Introduction

The Short Message Service (SMS) is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones. The text can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created as part of the GSM Phase 1 standard. The first short message is believed to have been sent in December 1992 from a Personal Computer (PC) to a mobile phone on the Vodafone GSM network in the UK. Each short message is up to 160 characters is length when Latin alphabets are used, and 70 characters in length when non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic and Chinese are used.

2. Customer Usage and Market Growth

There is no doubting the success of the Short Message Service- the market in Europe alone has reached over one billion messages despite little proactive marketing by network operators and phone manufacturers. Key market drivers over the next two years such as the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) will continue this growth path.

SMS VOLUMES PER EUROPEAN MARKET

The SMS market in the European Union reached one billion short messages per month in April 1999.
The market size thereby doubled in about six months. Very approximate market sizes are:

Country	SMS messages per month
Germany	200 million
Italy	150 million
Finland	75 million
UK	70 million
Norway	70 million
Sweden	70 million
Portugal	60 million
France	60 million
Spain	60 million
Denmark	50 million
Belgium	25 million
Greece	15 million
TOTAL	1 Billion

Back to Top

NETWORK OPERATOR MESSAGE QUANTITIES AND GROWTH

Specific examples for certain leading mobile operators are:

Back to Top

3. SMS Messaging Milestones

So how have these network operators developed their messaging volumes to such a high degree? How can you develop your own messaging market? What the factors that are driving the continuing growth in the SMS market and to what degree?

1. FIRST GENERATION SMS CENTER

The network operator needs to purchase its first generation SMS Center as part of the network commissioning plan. The initial SMS Center may be simply a voice mail platform module or alternatively a standalone SMS Center. It is not possible to make the Short Message Service available without an SMS Center since all short messages pass through the SMS Center.

2. VOICE MAIL NOTIFICATIONS AND SMS MOBILE TERMINATE

The network operator sees SMS as a "tick box option"- something to say that it does have on its network. Often SMS Mobile Terminate Services are offered along with voice mail notifications, which account for the vast majority of SMS traffic on the network- typically over three-quarters.

Back to Top

3. SMS MOBILE ORIGINATE

The network operator launches SMS Mobile Originate to give customer true two-way SMS capability. Customers experiment with the service and work out new uses for it. Addition of SMS Mobile Originate typically leads to 25% increase in overall SMS volumes being handled.

4. EMAIL

Additional of a wireless Internet/ mobile email service often follows, typically with the customer's mobile number becoming part of the email address they are allocated as part of the service. Emails sent to that address are forwarded as a short message to their wireless phone. Such a service tends to be popular with customers, especially in markets where Internet penetration is low and people don't already have an email address. This typically leads to 20% increase in overall SMS volumes being handled.

Back to Top

5. INFORMATION SERVICES

Addition of information services. These services typically start with mainstream content such as news, travel, weather and sports and over time, new information providers are sourced that offer lifestyle services such as horoscopes and jokes. Because there is typically a lot of work involved in sourcing and setting up content, these services tend to build up slowly, typically accounting for about a 10% increase in SMS volumes being handled.

6. BUSINESS PARTNERS PROGRAM

The network operator starts to see independent companies experimenting with SMS-based applications and offering these on a regional or company-specific basis. To encourage these developments and assist in their widespread deployment, the network operator hires a person whose sole responsibility is to manage relations with these business partners and help them to get any technical or commercial support they need. The aim is to try to get the businesspartners to deploy their applications using their network's SMS services rather than those of their competitors. Because vertical market applications can account for high messaging volumes, the introduction of a business partners program can soon lead to a further 20% increase in overall SMS message volumes being handled by the network.

Back to Top

7. SECOND GENERATION SMS CENTER

The network operator has seen gradual but significant increases in SMS traffic volumes as these initiatives have been taken and awareness of SMS builds.

They then often find that their SMS Center capacity is starting to be challenged and need to expand the existing platform or purchase an industrial strength SMS Center from another supplier. This then removes any constraints in handling messages, and may lead to corporate customer complaints about service reliability at peak times falling, typically leading to a 10% increase in overall SMS message volumes.

8. NATIONAL SMS INTERWORKING

The additional of interworking between network operators who are competing in the same geographical market gives customers to both networks the opportunity to use SMS in the same way as they do voice. Just as they can make a voice call to each other's phones, so too can they send short messages to each other.
Enabling this capability can rapidly increase the number of available messaging destinations, thereby increasing the value and use of SMS. As such, adding national SMS interworking can lead to an uplift of 50% in SMS message volumes.

By this time, the total use of SMS on the network has reached "Critical Mass". There are sufficient regular users and awareness of and momentum behind the services. SMS has become an integral and important part of many customer's everyday business and personal lives. Facilitating international SMS roaming is also important, particularly in land-locked countries where border crossing is frequent.

Back to Top

9. SMS FOR PREPAYMENT

The next quantum leap in SMS traffic volumes is caused by the introduction of SMS for prepayment customers. These customers pay for their cellular airtime as they go rather than having contracts. Enabling the prepay customers to send short messages causes large traffic uplifts because the typical young person who is the main user of prepaid services is also ready, willing and able to manipulate the phone keypad and originate short messages. When customers are cost conscious, they tend to use SMS to let their friends know about changes in meeting arrangements and so on, calculating that this is less expensive than making a voice call to communicate the same information. An increase in SMS traffic of 100% (sometimes more) is not unusual when SMS for prepay is introduced. 

For example, as we saw at the start of this guide, whilst Vodafone in the UK had more postpaid customers than prepay (three million postpaid, two million prepaid), the prepay customers sent more than twice as many short messages as the postpaid users.

Back to Top

10. PREDICTIVE TEXT INPUT PHONES

Because simple person to person messaging is such an important component of total SMS traffic volumes, anything that simplifies message generation is an important enabler of SMS. Predictive text input algorithms such as T9 from Tegic that anticipate which word the user is trying to generate significantly reduce the number of key strokes that need to be made to input a message. Widespread incorporation of such algorithms into the installed base of mobile phones will typically lead to an average uplift in SMS traffic of 25% per enabled user. These predictive text algorithms support multiple languages.

Text Input software demonstration

11. STANDARDIZED PROTOCOLS E.G. WAP

The introduction of standardized protocols such as SIM Application Toolkit and the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) contributes to an increase in messaging usage by providing a standard service development and deployment environment for application developers and business partners. These protocols also make it easier for users to reply to and otherwise access messaging services through the provision of custom menus on the phone. As such, whilst these protocols are only a means to an end and not new messaging destinations or services in their own right, they are likely to lead to a 10-15% uplift in total SMS volumes.

12. TERMINAL DEVELOPMENTS E.G. SMART, HANDHELD COMPUTERS

The introduction of more friendly and easy to use terminals contributes to increases in messaging usage by providing simpler access to messaging services. Terminals such as smart phones make it easier for users to originate, reply to and otherwise access messaging services through the provision of a QWERTY keyboard rather than the limited keypad on standard mobile phones. As such, whilst these terminals are only a means to an end and not new messaging destinations or services in their own right, they are likely to lead to a 10-15% uplift in total SMS volumes.

As such, there are various steps that mobile carriers can and should take to spur the development of SMS usage. Each of these steps is complementary and useful in making SMS a success. It is the combined effect from these steps that has led to the ignificant and almost exponential growth in the usage of SMS by many developed network operators in the late 1990s.

Back to Top

4. SMS Roaming

NATIONAL SMS INTERWORKING

Most network operators around the world recognize the need to allow customers to send short messages to people on network operators competing in the same country as them. Just as you can call using voice, so too should you be able to communicate using the Short Message Service.

To release national SMS interconnects, there are some issues. From a commercial perspective, network operators competing in the same country often charge different prices for the Short Message Service and offer different services.

In such cases, knowledgeable users could benefit from accessing less expensive or more sophisticated Short Message Services by changing SMS Center addresses or sending their messages in a different way. A price has to be agreed for such inter-network national messaging to discourage or prevent such behavior.

Technically speaking, network operators are reluctant to allow their competitors access to their signaling channels, over which short messages are transmitted.

This is because these channels also handle voice call set up and other mission critical tasks. However, firewalls have resolved many of these technical issues.

For example, about half the countries in Europe had inter-network national roaming by mid-1999 (including Scandinavia, UK, Netherlands) whilst half did not (including Germany, Portugal and France).

INTERNATIONAL SMS ROAMING

Generally with the GSM Short Message Service, no specific international SMS roaming agreement is needed to use SMS overseas. Instead, international SMS roaming automatically arises whenever the following conditions are met:

• the GSM network operators have a voice roaming agreement, and
• the mobile network supports SMS. Obviously mobile phone users who are using another mobile network (known as "roamers") cannot use SMS if the mobile network they have roamed onto does NOT support the Short Message Service they are trying to use, and
• neither of the network operators have taken specific measures to preclude such short messaging activity.

Back to Top

5. SMS Phone Features

Nearly all GSM mobile telephones are able to receive short messages (known as SMS MT: Mobile Terminate). The only known exceptions that CANNOT receive short messages are some of the very first GSM mobile phones released in the early 1990s such as the Motorola 3200, the AEG Telcard 901 and the Alcatel HB100.

All major and minor phone manufacturers without exception now have at least one mobile phone available that can send short messages (known as SMS MO: Mobile Originate). Furthermore, most phone manufacturers are not now supplying ANY mobile phones in their range of models that do NOT support SMS send. Even budget phones can send messages. As such, the percentage of phones that are able to send short messages is increasing over time. At the beginning of 1999, approximately 75% of the installed worldwide base of GSM mobile phones were capable of SENDING a short message.

My optimal mobile device for using the Short Message Service would have the following features:

1. Predictive text input algorithms such as T9 from Tegic
2. Screen size of three lines or more
3. Keys that are not too small or too close together
4. Autoread feature such as that on some Motorola phones whereby messages can be displayed immediately
5. Confirmation of message delivery
6. An "ABC" button to allow easy switching between numbers and letters, as with, for example, the Nokia 2110
7. Ability to save messages in phone memory as well as SimCard, possibly save them in different message folders (like the Nokia 7110)
8. Vibrating alert for incoming messages.

Back to Top

6. The Future of SMS- Introducing the Long Message Service

It is a valid question to ask whether the Short Message Service (SMS) has a prosperous future ahead of it given that GSM is evolving to encompass high-speed packet data services such as GSM Packet Radio Service (GPRS) (See www.mobileGPRS.com).

GSM SMS has several unique features that can be summarized as message storage if the recipient is not available, confirmation of short message delivery to the sender and simultaneous transmission with GSM voice, data and fax services. Importantly, these features will NOT be incorporated into other planned GSM services such as GPRS. However, SMS does have some disadvantages-primarily the limited message length of 160 characters.

SMS as we know it will be used through to the year 2005 at least, since the mobile phones, infrastructure, specifications, market development and awareness are in place today. Over time, as users connect to networks that offer more advanced data services and buy mobile terminals that support them, they will find it more convenient to receive all their CHOSEN emails rather than only a notification by SMS. They will continue to use SMS for some applications- the underlying bearer will be mixed and matched according to the application and its importance to the user. SMS could be used automatically when roaming for example due to the advantages of store and forward when in a different time zone. Non-urgent emails could be sent by SMS for users to decide whether to forward the entire message. Urgent emails get sent immediately using packet data. By supporting multiple standards and bearer services, the Wireless Application Protocol anticipates this multiple service world. Essentially, in 3GSM, SMS will not be a standalone service but part of multimedia messaging. Different applications will use different bearer services- bearers will be mixed and matched depending on characteristics of application and mobile environment.

Back to Top