Short Messaging: What Your Teenager is Trying to Tell You in Text

In 1996 I went to work as a Sales Manager for the only carrier in the USA to use a technology in wireless communications called "GSM" or Global System for Mobile Communication. Used in Europe and Asia for many years, it was the new "Cellular" of the future called Personal Communications Services - PCS for short. I was promised that the customers of this "new" technology would be stunned with all the new features. It was going to revolutionize the way we used our cellular phones. The phones would be smaller, sleeker and the features & services were infinite. The first thing I learned to do was called Short Messaging Service - SMS for short. I was able to send a 140-160 character message to all my sales people at one time, eliminating the need for a phone call, conference call or impromptu meeting. I had a software program I could load onto my notebook computer and make multiple groups of names for my SMS address book. The messages were sent directly to their PCS phones, with their phone numbers as the address. It was liberating. That was before any carrier charged a fee for an SMS. It was a new concept that had not caught on quickly in the United States. It took some carriers longer to start offering text messaging because of the technology they were using. The GSM carriers had text messaging since about 1991 in Europe and Asia and from 1996 in the USA. The other carriers were using competitive technologies (you might hear it termed CDMA or TDMA) and so were a little later to offer what the GSM carriers had been allowing (one of the downsides to competing technologies). Fast forward ten years: