February 15, 2003
SMS celebrates 10th birthday
On December 3, 1992, an engineer named Neil Papworth sent the very first SMS with "MERRY CHRISTMAS" on it, to his collegeagues at Vodafone in Great Britain. But it was 7 years later that texting really took off.
Why did it take so long? Because for the first 7 years, cell phone users could only send an SMS to someone using the same operator. It wasn't until 1999 that short messages could be sent between different networks.
According to Andrew Bud, managing director of SMS transmission company mBlox, interviewed in the BBC, texting really only took off when it found its natural market — teenagers —attracted to pre-paid phones. "These pay-as-you-go users found their money went further with texting - which some networks originally neglected to charge for".
The technology was actually created by an Anglo-Dutch information technology firm called CMG, as reported in The Guardian.
According to Cor Stutterheim from CMG, "It started as a message service, allowing operators to inform all their own customers about things such as problems with the network. When we created SMS (Short Messaging Service) it was not really meant to communicate from consumer to consumer and certainly not meant to become the main channel which the younger generation would use to communicate with each other," added Stutterheim.
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