SMS Turns 15 Years Old

That's the whole story, right there in a nutshell. SMS is 15 - I would have guessed it was older, but maybe that's because I can't imagine my life without it. Now I don't want to say that SMS is a little, er, stunted in the growth department, but .... You'd think after 15 years SMS would be a mature technology, wouldn't you? One that didn't require you to punch in a specific carrier when you're sending from a web page. One that allowed you to forward messages (without the aid of an application always running on the phone). Heck, I'd settle for 200 (or so) characters instead of 160. Just saying.

I know that much of SMS' success is that it's stayed simple in an age of ever-increasing complexity and I'm happy for that, so far as it goes. Seriously, though, who do I have to kill so I never have to configure an email gateway on an unlocked phone again? 'Cause I'd do it, man.

The mobile phone industry is today celebrating the 15th birthday of the Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), the principal application behind text messaging first brought to market by Acision in 1992. The first ever SMSC was introduced as a product designed primarily to deal with the demands and improve reliability of a developing mobile industry, and in that year the first of many deals was signed with Telenor.

Read: 15 Years of the SMS (via ppcaddict)