The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. GSM is also a trade mark owned by the GSM Association. GSM may also refer to the Full Rate voice codec.
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.
Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) in the telecommunications industry is an open, industry standard protocol designed to provide a flexible data communication interface for the transfer of short message data between External Short Messaging Entities (ESMEs), Routing Entities (REs) and SMSC.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia message. The MMS standard extends the core SMS capability, allowing the exchange of text messages greater than 160 characters in length. Unlike text-only SMS, MMS can deliver a variety of media, including up to forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow of multiple images, or audio.
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network or may also be sent via satellite or Internet connection.
Mobile phone spam is a form of spam, directed at the text messaging or other communications services of mobile phones or smartphones. As the popularity of mobile phones surged in the early 2000s, frequent users of text messaging began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited commercial advertisements being sent to their telephones through text messaging. This can be particularly annoying for the recipient because, unlike in email, some recipients may be charged a fee for every message received, including spam. Mobile phone spam is generally less pervasive than email spam, where in 2010 around 90% of email is spam. The amount of mobile spam varies widely from region to region. In North America, mobile spam steadily increased after 2008 and accounted for half of all mobile phone traffic by 2019. In parts of Asia up to 30% of messages were spam in 2012.
160 is the natural number following 159 and preceding 161.
Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), sometimes referred to as "quick codes" or "feature codes", is a communications protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the mobile network operator's computers. USSD can be used for WAP browsing, prepaid callback service, mobile-money services, location-based content services, menu-based information services, and as part of configuring the phone on the network. The service does not require a messaging app, and does not incur charges.
Short codes, or short numbers, are short digit-sequences - significantly shorter than telephone numbers - that are used to address messages in the Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) and short message service (SMS) systems of mobile network operators. In addition to messaging, they may be used in abbreviated dialing.
Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".
An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommunications networks. In most cases, SMS and MMS are eventually routed to a mobile phone through a wireless carrier. SMS gateways are commonly used as a method for person-to-person to device-to-person communications. Many SMS gateways support content and media conversions from email, push, voice, and other formats.
Cell Broadcast (CB) is a method of sending messages to multiple mobile telephone users in a defined area at the same time. It is defined by the ETSI's GSM committee and 3GPP and is part of the 2G, 3G, 4G LTE (telecommunication) and 5G standards. It is also known as Short Message Service-Cell Broadcast (SMS-CB) or CB SMS.
Chikka, short for Chikka Text Messenger, was an Internet-based instant messaging application that supported free SMS or text messaging between online users and offline mobile subscribers. Chikka was released by Chikka Philippines, Inc. in the early 2000 and eventually established its connection with the country's network operators Smart Communications (2001), Globe Telecom (2002) and Sun Cellular (2004). With up to billions of messages being exchanged between online and mobile communities worldwide through Chikka, it is probably the world's first commercially successful integration of web and mobile utilities.
Short Message Service (SMS) language, textism, or textese is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in the late 1990s and early 2000s with mobile phone text messaging, and occasionally through Internet-based communication such as email and instant messaging.
Mobile translation is any electronic device or software application that provides audio translation. The concept includes any handheld electronic device that is specifically designed for audio translation. It also includes any machine translation service or software application for hand-held devices, including mobile telephones, Pocket PCs, and PDAs. Mobile translation provides hand-held device users with the advantage of instantaneous and non-mediated translation from one human language to another, usually against a service fee that is, nevertheless, significantly smaller than a human translator charges.
Matti Makkonen was a Finnish engineer in the field of mobile communications. He was employed by Nokia Networks and the then Telecom Finland, as well as Finnet Oy. Makkonen played a leading role in creating the mobile communication unit of what is today TeliaSonera. In 2008, Makkonen was awarded The Economist Innovation Award in the computing and telecommunications category for his work on text messaging (SMS).
Syniverse is an American communications technology company with a focus on 5G roaming, communications platform as a service (CPaaS), A2P Messaging, roaming clearing and settlement, IPX, fraud prevention, mobile identify and authentication solutions, IoT, Private Networks and other emerging technologies leveraged by global enterprises and telecommunication carriers.
In mobile telephony GSM 03.38 or 3GPP 23.038 is a character encoding used in GSM networks for SMS, CB and USSD. The 3GPP TS 23.038 standard defines GSM 7-bit default alphabet which is mandatory for GSM handsets and network elements, but the character set is suitable only for English and a number of Western-European languages. Languages such as Chinese, Korean or Japanese must be transferred using the 16-bit UCS-2 character encoding. A limited number of languages, like Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish and a number of languages used in India written with a Brahmic scripts may use 7-bit encoding with national language shift table defined in 3GPP 23.038. For binary messages, 8-bit encoding is used.
Bernard Ghillebaert is a French telecommunications engineer and businessman, and former Chief Executive of Orange UK. He is importantly known for setting the telecommunication standards for text messaging in 1985.
