11 ms·

Why text messages are limited to 160 characters

40 points by bootload 16y ago

corin_ 16y ago
Text messaging has become the prevalent form of mobile communication worldwide. an average of 357 texts per month in [Q2 2008 vs] an average of 204 calls I would think this suggests that calls are still the bigger method of communication. The average call will last much longer than what could be written in 160 characters. Also, a ninety second call discussing something could easily span a number of text messages back and fourth. Edit: New point after reading further: Just look at your average e-mail today, he noted. Many can be summed up in the subject line, and the rest often contains just a line or two of text asking for a favor or updating about a particular project. First, I don't accept the premise. Trying to suggest that 160 characters is more or less enough for the average email is laughable. Hell, a lot of the time it's not even enough for an SMS message or tweet. Second, why are they even being compared? Is SMS meant to be just the same as email but on your phone? Not in my book...
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Second, why are they even being compared? Is SMS meant to be just the same as email but on your phone? Not in my book… They are both ways to interact with others. The argument here is that most communication do fit in 160 characters when pared down to its essential components, and thus for most communications SMS are sufficient to replace emails.
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    Now say that in 160 characters. :)
    - masklinn 16y ago
      Both are communication channels. 160 characters is enough for most thought to come across. Therefore SMS can replace email in most cases (though not all).
- alain94040 16y ago
  calls are still the bigger method of communication I coined an expression: "one lunch is worth a thousand tweets." It got a good laugh from the audience at the last founder showcase. What I really mean of course, is that human contact is making a come back. Yes, you can tweet and text. But at some point, it feels all so detached. You'll crave actually meeting people in person. I think that will be a key trend of 2011, "back to reality".
- pnathan 16y ago
  Running some code over War and Peace from Project Gutenberg gives these numbers for sentence length. I cleaned the text of non-alpha | {sentence terminators}. Then I discarded any sentences with less than 4 characters under the assumption that they were spurious (ie, artifacts from the boilerplate PG text). Text with artifacts assumption: STDEV: 95.0115812751 MEAN: 74.4095505188 N: 26681 Text without artifacts assumption: STDEV: 82.3010550235 MEAN: 76.425092356 N: 30805 Looking at the high point of the first standard deviation of the artifacts-removed text, we see that it is at 169 characters. Same point for the text with artifacts, we have 158 characters. So assuming that the translated War and Peace represents a reasonable sample of English, 160 characters is fairly close to the length of a sentence. edit: formatting.
  - true_religion 16y ago
    > So assuming that the translated War and Peace represents a reasonable sample of English, 160 characters is fairly close to the length of a sentence. I would say the mean is close to the length of a sentence, and the first high mark via standard deviation is a long sentence. So a standard SMS should be able to fit 2 or so normally worded sentences or 3 concisely worded sentences.
    - pnathan 16y ago
      IMO post-Hemingway English has shorter sentences on average than it used to; I wouldn't mind targeting, say, Twilight with my code and getting the stats on it, but I am loath to steal Twilight just for personal amusement.
- hammock 16y ago
  "First, I don't accept the premise. Trying to suggest that 160 characters is more or less enough for the average email is laughable. Hell, a lot of the time it's not even enough for an SMS message or tweet. Second, why are they even being compared? Is SMS meant to be just the same as email but on your phone? Not in my book..." Have you considered the idea that maybe your writing is just too wordy? You could easily reduce your 327-char comment to 110. Look at what I did below - much better! SMS is not long enough to replace emails. Often, it's not even long enough for me to write a thought or tweet.
smanek 16y ago
U.S. mobile users sent an average of 357 texts per month in the second quarter of 2008 versus an average of 204 calls, the report said. The average person sends ~ 10 text messages and makes 7 calls a day? Wow, I'm behind the curve ...
- dododo 16y ago
  the mean isn't a robust statistic. i don't think your inference is correct in this case. a single user can theoretically throw the mean off from the central tendency completely. i would imagine there are a few users that send a lot more text messages and calling more than most people, biasing the result. it would be more useful to talk about the median in this case, i think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics#Examples_of_robust_and_non-robust_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics#Examples_of_r...
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Agreed. I know many ppl who send 1000 or more texts per month. But I don't think there exist many in the world who make that many calls for personal use.
masklinn 16y ago
They're not limited to 160 characters, any GSM phone is able to create and receive segmented SMS (a single message over multiple segments), up to 255 segments of 134 bytes. I have read CDMA phones are not able to perform such an amazing feat though.
- robin_reala 16y ago
  Is that true? I’m sure it is nowadays, but I remember getting a phone upgrade (from a previous GSM phone) that had this ability.
- dkersten 16y ago
  User Data Header => UDH Length + Information Element Identifier + Information Element Length + Concatenated Message reference number + Sequence Number of Part + Number of Parts. Each is one octet, for a total of 6. Hence 134 octets, Note that the user data header can, conceptually (I have not seen it in practice, but the spec allows it) contain multiple information elements of varying sizes. I don't know much about CDMA, but from the little I did interact with it, the upper levels of the protocol stack (TCAP upwards) looked almost identical to me. Does this mean that CDMA "phones" never implemented this or is it a protocol issue?
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > Does this mean that CDMA "phones" never implemented this or is it a protocol issue? I do not know, I just read recently that CDMA had no segmented SMS (in relation to the CDMA iPhone I believe, but for the life of me I can't remember the source). I just threw it out there in case somebody had the knowledge to infirm or confirm it. If it was in relation to the CDMA iphone indeed, I'd expect it's either in the baseband or a protocol issue, since GSM iPhone has no issue with segmented SMS (in either production or consumption)
    - dkersten 16y ago
      It would be very strange if the phones just didn't implement it, so at a guess I'd say its a protocol issue too, but as far as I remember, the upper levels of the protocol stack were the same between GSM and CDMA so I don't see why the protocol wouldn't support it (since the user data is inside the message payload itself and doesn't interact with the rest of the payload. I guess CDMA must not support a user data header for some reason? I'd be very interested in hearing if this is true or not, if anybody knows.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Derbasti 16y ago
What an anachronistic technology in a world of ubiquitous internet connections. I, for one, hate SMS.
- gaius 16y ago
  a world of ubiquitous internet connections Haha, I dunno what world that is, I regularly travel to places where there's no GPRS/EDGE/whatever but there is good ol' GSM. Or sometimes there is data but it's prohibitively expensive. Incidentally if you hate SMS you probably just have a crap phone. BlackBerry for one presents the same interface for SMS, IM, whatever, the underlying transport is irrelevant to the experience. I guess iPhone and Android are the same.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > I guess iPhone and Android are the same. Nope, the interface is not unified, they have no equivalent to BBM. Though in my experience, their SMS experience is quite acceptable.
  - Derbasti 16y ago
    I can tell you what world that is. It is the 'old world', Europe. I live in Germany. I have an iPhone. I have 'net access virtually everywhere including all of western Europe. I pay 30$ per month for it. I have lived in the US for a while, and I can tell you: US mobile carriers offer incredibly bad service for incredibly high prices. All of western Europe is way ahead of AT&T or Comcast in these regards. I have not had a single 'dropped call', ever. This problem just does not exist outside the US (except when you enter a tunnel, of course). Hence, I can always send emails, or even Facebook or Twitter updates from anywhere. Why would I want to send an SMS instead?
    - jarek 16y ago
      Your "old world", western Europe, is an outlier. Head out into the middle of nowhere in northern Norway and see how your Facebook works.
nicpottier 16y ago
This is kind of a weird article, it almost contradicts itself a bit. As the article mentions, SMS'es are kind of piggy-backed with control signals sent on the network. At first they found they could tack on a 128 character message, but then reduced the character set further to get to 160 characters. What isn't clear in the article is when this 'proof' that 160 was enough occurred. Did it occur after they figured out they could jam 160 in, in order to validate that 160 would be useful enough? Or did it really occur in the order that the article talks about, that they first picked 160 characters out of the sky, then managed to jam that into the signal. I find the latter to much less likely. 160 just happens to be the most you can fit in to the packet, which he then validated was probably enough to be useful. Anybody know definitely otherwise?
- pwg 16y ago
  Here is part of what the Wikipedia article has to say, which appears to show that the size limits were indeed the result of the existing design, and so the only 'proof' here was that the existing amount of data would be sufficient for the intended purpose. Which makes the linked article another example of the mainstream press getting themselves all confused when it comes to cause and effect in technology. A key sentence in the Wikipedia article was that SMS, so limited, could be implemented with software changes only, making its rollout by far easier and more likely to occur. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS: "The innovation in SMS is Short. The GSM is optimized for telephony, since this was identified as its main application. The key idea for SMS was to use this telephony-optimized system, and to transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephony traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. In this way, unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages at minimal cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages to 128 bytes (later improved to 140 bytes, or 160 seven-bit characters) so that the messages could fit into the existing signaling formats. This concept allowed SMS to be implemented in every mobile station by updating its software. This concept was instrumental for the implementation of SMS in every mobile station ever produced and in every network from early days. Hence, a large base of SMS capable terminals and networks existed when the users began to utilize the SMS."
- dkersten 16y ago
perlgeek 16y ago
Somehow this reminds me of the story that the length of audio CDs was chosen so that Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 would fit onto one CD (see for example http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.asp )
- corin_ 16y ago
  Seems it may actually be more than just a myth. See the penultimate paragraph on http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/?strPage=Info&strBrand=Various&strType=The_cd_laser&blnSefURL=true http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/?strPage=Info&strBrand=... Wikipedia also gives http://www.aes.org/historical/store/oralhistory/?code=OHP-016-DVD http://www.aes.org/historical/store/oralhistory/?code=OHP-01... as a source for the Beethoven story being true, although you have to buy that interview to actually hear it.
vilius 16y ago
Mr. Hillebrand is not a rich man, although given that the text message is a number 1 overpriced product (http://www.walletpop.com/2010/09/27/10-most-overpriced-products-you-should-avoid/ http://www.walletpop.com/2010/09/27/10-most-overpriced-produ...) it seems that his work has made huge amounts of money for the others.
- dkersten 16y ago
  I can confirm that mobile operators absolutely LOVE SMS because it is so highly overpriced for the amount of data you get to send. They love it so much, in fact,t hat they are willing on spending large sums of money on services to improve the SMS network in some way (eg, we did anti-fraud and anti-spam stuff, amongst other more niche things).
- NickPollard 16y ago
  I'm surprised that Printer Ink Cartridges don't appear on that list.
jcromartie 16y ago
Because cellular providers love massive piles of cash?
jarin 16y ago
Slightly off-topic, but it's a little mind-boggling that they charge 10 cents per message for something that rides on control signals and gets the lowest priority on the network.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- muriithi 16y ago
  Here in Kenya we pay between Kshs 1-2 per message to send. Receiving is free. Considering that the exchange rate is Kshs 80 to 1$ a message is about 1.25 to 2.50 cents.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
singular 16y ago
In the UK you can combine several texts together seamlessly so this limit is meaningful only with respect to billing, and most plans provide so many free texts that it simply isn't something you think about - is that similar in the US?
- Qz 16y ago
  Yes for modern phones, although I can't say how many free texts is considered enough. If you're not on an unlimited plan and you start texting with someone who is, you can quickly stack up hundreds of texts without realizing it...
  - singular 16y ago
    True, and that is of course applicable here in the UK too, however it is rare, in my experience at least, to see people being too concerned about text length. In the past people would be very anal about using 'text speak' i.e. hi m8, how r u? partly to fit into the char limit.
- masklinn 16y ago
  The feature itself is a feature of GSM and part of the GSM specifications (see lower in the comments thread, I am not sure this also works on CDMA and remember having read it didn't, but can't find the source again. If anybody knows, I'm interested), so it is available at least in GSM networks (AT&T and T-Mobile). On the other hand, I do not believe US operators to be quite as generous as UK (or more generally european) ones when it comes to SMS bundles, though I can be wrong: I at least know that many (most?) US cellphone customers pay not just for outbound but also for inbound text messages. And from checking the Verizon and Orange UK websites (I'd have checked O2 but i can't access their shop from outside the UK): * At Verizon, texts are either 20c each or bundles of $5/250 texts (2c/text) or $20/5000 (0.4c/text), there are apparently unlimited options with the $10 and $20 bundles but they're only between VZ phones within precise coverage areas ("National Enhanced Services and Extended National Enhanced Services Rate and Coverage Areas") * At Orange UK, two out of three plan lines (Dolphin and Canary) have unlimited text messaging from the start, Racoon (apparently the one used to talk to your grandparents) and value have limited amounts of texts (an unlimited texts option is available for £5, prices for out-of-plan texts are similar to VZ's). And I believe incoming texts are not double-dipped (only the sender pays, unless it's an international text maybe)

40 points by bootload 16y ago

Text messaging has become the prevalent form of mobile communication worldwide. an average of 357 texts per month in [Q2 2008 vs] an average of 204 calls I would think this suggests that calls are still the bigger method of communication. The average call will last much longer than what could be written in 160 characters. Also, a ninety second call discussing something could easily span a number of text messages back and fourth. Edit: New point after reading further: Just look at your average e-mail today, he noted. Many can be summed up in the subject line, and the rest often contains just a line or two of text asking for a favor or updating about a particular project. First, I don't accept the premise. Trying to suggest that 160 characters is more or less enough for the average email is laughable. Hell, a lot of the time it's not even enough for an SMS message or tweet. Second, why are they even being compared? Is SMS meant to be just the same as email but on your phone? Not in my book...

masklinn 16y ago
> Second, why are they even being compared? Is SMS meant to be just the same as email but on your phone? Not in my book… They are both ways to interact with others. The argument here is that most communication do fit in 160 characters when pared down to its essential components, and thus for most communications SMS are sufficient to replace emails.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Now say that in 160 characters. :)
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Both are communication channels. 160 characters is enough for most thought to come across. Therefore SMS can replace email in most cases (though not all).
alain94040 16y ago
calls are still the bigger method of communication I coined an expression: "one lunch is worth a thousand tweets." It got a good laugh from the audience at the last founder showcase. What I really mean of course, is that human contact is making a come back. Yes, you can tweet and text. But at some point, it feels all so detached. You'll crave actually meeting people in person. I think that will be a key trend of 2011, "back to reality".
pnathan 16y ago
Running some code over War and Peace from Project Gutenberg gives these numbers for sentence length. I cleaned the text of non-alpha | {sentence terminators}. Then I discarded any sentences with less than 4 characters under the assumption that they were spurious (ie, artifacts from the boilerplate PG text). Text with artifacts assumption: STDEV: 95.0115812751 MEAN: 74.4095505188 N: 26681 Text without artifacts assumption: STDEV: 82.3010550235 MEAN: 76.425092356 N: 30805 Looking at the high point of the first standard deviation of the artifacts-removed text, we see that it is at 169 characters. Same point for the text with artifacts, we have 158 characters. So assuming that the translated War and Peace represents a reasonable sample of English, 160 characters is fairly close to the length of a sentence. edit: formatting.
- true_religion 16y ago
  > So assuming that the translated War and Peace represents a reasonable sample of English, 160 characters is fairly close to the length of a sentence. I would say the mean is close to the length of a sentence, and the first high mark via standard deviation is a long sentence. So a standard SMS should be able to fit 2 or so normally worded sentences or 3 concisely worded sentences.
  - pnathan 16y ago
    IMO post-Hemingway English has shorter sentences on average than it used to; I wouldn't mind targeting, say, Twilight with my code and getting the stats on it, but I am loath to steal Twilight just for personal amusement.
hammock 16y ago
"First, I don't accept the premise. Trying to suggest that 160 characters is more or less enough for the average email is laughable. Hell, a lot of the time it's not even enough for an SMS message or tweet. Second, why are they even being compared? Is SMS meant to be just the same as email but on your phone? Not in my book..." Have you considered the idea that maybe your writing is just too wordy? You could easily reduce your 327-char comment to 110. Look at what I did below - much better! SMS is not long enough to replace emails. Often, it's not even long enough for me to write a thought or tweet.

smanek 16y ago

U.S. mobile users sent an average of 357 texts per month in the second quarter of 2008 versus an average of 204 calls, the report said. The average person sends ~ 10 text messages and makes 7 calls a day? Wow, I'm behind the curve ...

dododo 16y ago
the mean isn't a robust statistic. i don't think your inference is correct in this case. a single user can theoretically throw the mean off from the central tendency completely. i would imagine there are a few users that send a lot more text messages and calling more than most people, biasing the result. it would be more useful to talk about the median in this case, i think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics#Examples_of_robust_and_non-robust_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics#Examples_of_r...
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Agreed. I know many ppl who send 1000 or more texts per month. But I don't think there exist many in the world who make that many calls for personal use.

masklinn 16y ago

They're not limited to 160 characters, any GSM phone is able to create and receive segmented SMS (a single message over multiple segments), up to 255 segments of 134 bytes. I have read CDMA phones are not able to perform such an amazing feat though.

robin_reala 16y ago
Is that true? I’m sure it is nowadays, but I remember getting a phone upgrade (from a previous GSM phone) that had this ability.
dkersten 16y ago
User Data Header => UDH Length + Information Element Identifier + Information Element Length + Concatenated Message reference number + Sequence Number of Part + Number of Parts. Each is one octet, for a total of 6. Hence 134 octets, Note that the user data header can, conceptually (I have not seen it in practice, but the spec allows it) contain multiple information elements of varying sizes. I don't know much about CDMA, but from the little I did interact with it, the upper levels of the protocol stack (TCAP upwards) looked almost identical to me. Does this mean that CDMA "phones" never implemented this or is it a protocol issue?
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Does this mean that CDMA "phones" never implemented this or is it a protocol issue? I do not know, I just read recently that CDMA had no segmented SMS (in relation to the CDMA iPhone I believe, but for the life of me I can't remember the source). I just threw it out there in case somebody had the knowledge to infirm or confirm it. If it was in relation to the CDMA iphone indeed, I'd expect it's either in the baseband or a protocol issue, since GSM iPhone has no issue with segmented SMS (in either production or consumption)
  - dkersten 16y ago
    It would be very strange if the phones just didn't implement it, so at a guess I'd say its a protocol issue too, but as far as I remember, the upper levels of the protocol stack were the same between GSM and CDMA so I don't see why the protocol wouldn't support it (since the user data is inside the message payload itself and doesn't interact with the rest of the payload. I guess CDMA must not support a user data header for some reason? I'd be very interested in hearing if this is true or not, if anybody knows.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Derbasti 16y ago

What an anachronistic technology in a world of ubiquitous internet connections. I, for one, hate SMS.

gaius 16y ago
a world of ubiquitous internet connections Haha, I dunno what world that is, I regularly travel to places where there's no GPRS/EDGE/whatever but there is good ol' GSM. Or sometimes there is data but it's prohibitively expensive. Incidentally if you hate SMS you probably just have a crap phone. BlackBerry for one presents the same interface for SMS, IM, whatever, the underlying transport is irrelevant to the experience. I guess iPhone and Android are the same.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > I guess iPhone and Android are the same. Nope, the interface is not unified, they have no equivalent to BBM. Though in my experience, their SMS experience is quite acceptable.
- Derbasti 16y ago
  I can tell you what world that is. It is the 'old world', Europe. I live in Germany. I have an iPhone. I have 'net access virtually everywhere including all of western Europe. I pay 30$ per month for it. I have lived in the US for a while, and I can tell you: US mobile carriers offer incredibly bad service for incredibly high prices. All of western Europe is way ahead of AT&T or Comcast in these regards. I have not had a single 'dropped call', ever. This problem just does not exist outside the US (except when you enter a tunnel, of course). Hence, I can always send emails, or even Facebook or Twitter updates from anywhere. Why would I want to send an SMS instead?
  - jarek 16y ago
    Your "old world", western Europe, is an outlier. Head out into the middle of nowhere in northern Norway and see how your Facebook works.

nicpottier 16y ago

This is kind of a weird article, it almost contradicts itself a bit. As the article mentions, SMS'es are kind of piggy-backed with control signals sent on the network. At first they found they could tack on a 128 character message, but then reduced the character set further to get to 160 characters. What isn't clear in the article is when this 'proof' that 160 was enough occurred. Did it occur after they figured out they could jam 160 in, in order to validate that 160 would be useful enough? Or did it really occur in the order that the article talks about, that they first picked 160 characters out of the sky, then managed to jam that into the signal. I find the latter to much less likely. 160 just happens to be the most you can fit in to the packet, which he then validated was probably enough to be useful. Anybody know definitely otherwise?

pwg 16y ago
Here is part of what the Wikipedia article has to say, which appears to show that the size limits were indeed the result of the existing design, and so the only 'proof' here was that the existing amount of data would be sufficient for the intended purpose. Which makes the linked article another example of the mainstream press getting themselves all confused when it comes to cause and effect in technology. A key sentence in the Wikipedia article was that SMS, so limited, could be implemented with software changes only, making its rollout by far easier and more likely to occur. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS: "The innovation in SMS is Short. The GSM is optimized for telephony, since this was identified as its main application. The key idea for SMS was to use this telephony-optimized system, and to transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephony traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. In this way, unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages at minimal cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages to 128 bytes (later improved to 140 bytes, or 160 seven-bit characters) so that the messages could fit into the existing signaling formats. This concept allowed SMS to be implemented in every mobile station by updating its software. This concept was instrumental for the implementation of SMS in every mobile station ever produced and in every network from early days. Hence, a large base of SMS capable terminals and networks existed when the users began to utilize the SMS."
dkersten 16y ago

perlgeek 16y ago

Somehow this reminds me of the story that the length of audio CDs was chosen so that Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 would fit onto one CD (see for example http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.asp )

corin_ 16y ago
Seems it may actually be more than just a myth. See the penultimate paragraph on http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/?strPage=Info&strBrand=Various&strType=The_cd_laser&blnSefURL=true http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/?strPage=Info&strBrand=... Wikipedia also gives http://www.aes.org/historical/store/oralhistory/?code=OHP-016-DVD http://www.aes.org/historical/store/oralhistory/?code=OHP-01... as a source for the Beethoven story being true, although you have to buy that interview to actually hear it.

vilius 16y ago

Mr. Hillebrand is not a rich man, although given that the text message is a number 1 overpriced product (http://www.walletpop.com/2010/09/27/10-most-overpriced-products-you-should-avoid/ http://www.walletpop.com/2010/09/27/10-most-overpriced-produ...) it seems that his work has made huge amounts of money for the others.

dkersten 16y ago
I can confirm that mobile operators absolutely LOVE SMS because it is so highly overpriced for the amount of data you get to send. They love it so much, in fact,t hat they are willing on spending large sums of money on services to improve the SMS network in some way (eg, we did anti-fraud and anti-spam stuff, amongst other more niche things).
NickPollard 16y ago
I'm surprised that Printer Ink Cartridges don't appear on that list.

jcromartie 16y ago

Because cellular providers love massive piles of cash?

jarin 16y ago

Slightly off-topic, but it's a little mind-boggling that they charge 10 cents per message for something that rides on control signals and gets the lowest priority on the network.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
muriithi 16y ago
Here in Kenya we pay between Kshs 1-2 per message to send. Receiving is free. Considering that the exchange rate is Kshs 80 to 1$ a message is about 1.25 to 2.50 cents.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

singular 16y ago

In the UK you can combine several texts together seamlessly so this limit is meaningful only with respect to billing, and most plans provide so many free texts that it simply isn't something you think about - is that similar in the US?

Qz 16y ago
Yes for modern phones, although I can't say how many free texts is considered enough. If you're not on an unlimited plan and you start texting with someone who is, you can quickly stack up hundreds of texts without realizing it...
- singular 16y ago
  True, and that is of course applicable here in the UK too, however it is rare, in my experience at least, to see people being too concerned about text length. In the past people would be very anal about using 'text speak' i.e. hi m8, how r u? partly to fit into the char limit.
masklinn 16y ago
The feature itself is a feature of GSM and part of the GSM specifications (see lower in the comments thread, I am not sure this also works on CDMA and remember having read it didn't, but can't find the source again. If anybody knows, I'm interested), so it is available at least in GSM networks (AT&T and T-Mobile). On the other hand, I do not believe US operators to be quite as generous as UK (or more generally european) ones when it comes to SMS bundles, though I can be wrong: I at least know that many (most?) US cellphone customers pay not just for outbound but also for inbound text messages. And from checking the Verizon and Orange UK websites (I'd have checked O2 but i can't access their shop from outside the UK): * At Verizon, texts are either 20c each or bundles of $5/250 texts (2c/text) or $20/5000 (0.4c/text), there are apparently unlimited options with the $10 and $20 bundles but they're only between VZ phones within precise coverage areas ("National Enhanced Services and Extended National Enhanced Services Rate and Coverage Areas") * At Orange UK, two out of three plan lines (Dolphin and Canary) have unlimited text messaging from the start, Racoon (apparently the one used to talk to your grandparents) and value have limited amounts of texts (an unlimited texts option is available for £5, prices for out-of-plan texts are similar to VZ's). And I believe incoming texts are not double-dipped (only the sender pays, unless it's an international text maybe)