SMS celebrates 30 years and reinvents itself as a leading tool in the professional communications sector

SMS (Short Message Service) celebrates you His thirtieth birthday The transition from being the main channel of communication in conversations between individuals to one of the most used methods of communication in the professional sector, which stands out in the field of mass trade of products.

SMS history starts at 1984With the Finnish engineer Matty McConnen who was already working on the idea of ​​creating a messaging system for mobile networks. In addition, different countries at that time were studying how to implement a global system for mobile communications (GSM).

Later, the German Eng Friedhelm Hillebrand Determine what this messaging service will be like, which has created 160 characters max. But the first SMS in this way happens to the British programmer Neil Papworth Send a 15-character birthday greetings message to Richard Jarvisa Vodafone executive, received it on his Orbitel 901 phone, in December 1992.

So was the company Nokia who a year later introduced a distinctive sound on his phones to indicate received messages and made it fashionable to send messages from one individual to another. However, at first messages could only be sent between phones belonging to the same phone operator, until interconnection between operators became possible in 1999, allowing the use of different networks with the GSM standard.

Over the years, SMS has entered the daily life of every person who uses a mobile phone, and has become a popular means of communication. In Spain, The limit of SMS sent was reached in 2006, adding the historical figure of 10,000 million SMS, as registered by the National Competition Market Commission (CNMC). However, nowadays, with the advent of instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, SMS usage has decreased significantly.

Faced with this situation, SMS has found its place in communication, and has become one of the most used methods for transmitting information in professional fields, that is, messages sent by organizations to individuals. In fact, the data collected by CNMC depicts this In 2020, organizations sent 4.3 billion SMS messagesWhich represents 86 percent of messages received by Spaniards.

In this sense, in scope Professional communicationSMS are the pioneers as a media in wholesale or trade ‘Rita.’I am’. This sector, which includes companies specializing in mass marketing of products to a large number of customers, sent 16.48 percent of SMS messages in 2022, according to data from the communications services company SMSpubli.

Next, file health sector It was the second professional field that sent the highest number of SMS (10.64%), and in third place stands out the education sector, which accounted for 6.4% of SMS sent in 2022 in Spain.

When SMS began to become popular as a common form of communication, the educational sector saw more disadvantages than advantages in these messages. AndThe language has been adapted to abbreviationWith the aim of not exceeding the character limit (160 characters in an SMS), causing conflicts if students do not understand spelling rules well.

However, the instant messaging format has been irrevocably cemented as a form of socialization and communication. right Now, The education sector is one of the sectors that most use SMS to communicate with students. In this regard, it is universities that use these messages the most, with more than 2,000 shipments on average per month, according to SMSpubli.

As explained by SMSpubli’s Managing Director Europe, Laurent Buron, SMS “constitutes a direct and immediate channel for the transmission of information of vital importance”, which makes it an effective means of communication. Similarly, SMSpubli data supports messaging effectiveness, with a 95 percent open rate in the first three minutes after sending.

Among SMS purposes in the educational sector, the most frequent tool is to inform about service updates, at 22 percent. These messages refer to last minute notifications such as class cancellations or differences in the school calendar.

The most frequent SMS tool after service updates is appointment reminders, at 9 percent. These notifications notify you of the date of future exams or selected activities. This closely follows the purpose of communicating notifications to 8 per cent employees.

SMS is still in operation 30 years later, albeit with a different purpose than it was in its beginnings. Text messaging has been reinvented targeting companies looking for a new informational career.

On the other hand, the development of SMS using the Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard is gaining momentum. This is an agreement between the GSM Association and Google signed in 2016, where they developed this system, which works like messaging applications and also allows the user Send pictures, “gifts” and audio recordings Using the service already integrated into your mobile phone. At the moment, RCS is available for Android phones.