Happy birthday SMS: 15 today

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Today marks the 15th anniversary since the first commercial short message service (SMS) text was sent.

That first message, which read "Merry Christmas," was sent by Neil Papworth, an engineer at Airwide Solutions, via the Vodafone network to a colleague at the mobile operator who was enjoying the festivities of a staff Christmas party.

Papworth sent the text on 3 December using a PC terminal and traditional keyboard, while the recipient, Vodafone's Richard Jarvis, received the message using an Orbitel 901 handset.

"I can remember the event, being there, typing [the message] in and getting confirmation that it had got through. But I wasn't the chosen one or anything like that. Eventually the time came when we had to take the system down to Vodafone to plug it in and get it working on the live network. Because I'd been working on the interface stuff it made sense for me to go down and do it," Papworth said.

"I'm still a texter today although I don't need to use it too much at work. I'm based in Montreal in Canada and still have lots of friends in the UK so it's one of my primary communication methods. I like texting as it's private and non intrusive. If you call someone they feel obliged to answer but with a text you can choose not to read it just yet... The day my daughter was born I told all of my family and friends her weight, etc by text. I was able to type one message, send it to 20 people and then go straight back inside [the hospital]."

That first message sent back in 1992 was just the tip of the iceberg. It wasn't until the following year that phone-to-phone texting was born, thanks to an engineering student at Nokia being the first to type an SMS on a GSM phone.

Initially, users were restricted to sending same network texts, but since changing the rules of the game in 1999, SMS has exploded.

Indeed, today, more than one billion text messages are sent each week, according to the Mobile Data Association (MDA).

Despite living in Canada now, Papworth still works for Airwide, a company which is clearly proud of the part it played in an industry milestone and, as such is hosting an event tomorrow to celebrate the milestone achievement, look back at SMS' history and discuss and debate its future.

"When we look back fifteen years, no one would have imagined the success of the medium," said Jay Seaton, chief marketing officer at Airwide. "SMS is not only affordable and easy to use but is now an established earner for mobile operators and those in the industry. In 2006, the majority (more than 80 per cent) of operator's revenues continued to come from SMS, especially in countries with fast developing mobile networks such as the Philippines where a typical day sees over 400 million text messages sent."

Seaton added: "The view that SMS was rapidly being superseded by other messaging technologies has been replaced by the recognition that revenue-generating services can be rapidly and reliably deployed on the SMS infrastructure, and the adoption of those services will be dramatically faster due to the ubiquitous nature of SMS."

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