160: The story behind text messaging

I thought it was because of the technical limitation imposed of using the free space in the tower transmission lines (non-data, status/control) or something like that. I read somewhere a bit ago that carriers used this "free" space (both free as in no cost and free as in empty space) for text messages instead of using the actual data connections, hence the 160 character limit; while it cost nothing "additional" to provide the service the carriers are raking in the $$ on charging a lot for something that cost them nothing.

Interesting non the less.

@MattMojo: That's about what I heart as well.
However, "free as in no cost" is not really true. It does require capacity in the bases and storage for all the messages that couldn't immediately be sent. Delivering an SMS message costs as much as a phone call which is hung up before the connection's established. Which also isn't completely free of costs, but traditionally financed by other incomes. Generally, it's a bit complicated to name costs for such things, as it consists mostly of fixed costs (install and maintain bases, server parks, software maintenance, ...). An UMTS (or DSL) data connection doesn't really cost that much either, but it takes a bigger share of the (hopefully ;)) existing resources.

Unicode languages will actually be limited to half of that size, as each char equals 2...

If you are in the mood of some more history, click on my name link and head over to a post I wrote about the history of PDA's... ;-)