SMS Turns 30!

Scott Navratil

Happy Birthday, SMS!

On December 3, 1992, the first SMS text message in history was sent by Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, who used a personal computer to send “Merry Christmas” to a coworker’s phone. The coworker couldn’t reply, because that functionality didn’t exist yet; he had to call him. A year later, it hit the market on cell phones, but you were limited to 160 characters, you could only end to someone in your own provider network, and you had to type via the numeric keypad–birthing a whole new series of acronyms.

Thanks, Neil! And we can’t wait to see what the next few years bring.

Date posted: December 2, 2022

Topic: 10DLC Long Code   Messaging   Short Code   Toll-Free Texting  

Tags: MMS   SMS  

Scott Navratil

Scott, a member of our Commio team, has held executive management positions at several top IP communications companies and was named one of Colorado Business Magazine’s most powerful salespeople. He is a regular speaker at national telecom events. Scott holds a B.A. in Meteorology from the University of Northern Colorado. Scott primarily enjoys spending time with his family in Colorado and also enjoys skiing, snowboarding, racing motorcycles, and astronomy.

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