Great, Story, Why, SMS, limited, 160, characters?

Every wondered why text messages or SMS’s are limited to 160 characters? I wondered but did not bother to find the answer. Someone at LA Times bothered and this story is from the founder of SMS himself.

Friedhelm Hillebrand is the master behind the SMS and after enough research not backed by any data, he found that a meaningful message can be sent in 160 characters. In his words - 160 characters is -  “Perfectly sufficient”

Guess what? It was perfectly sufficient and with twitter coming along which has SMS as its backbone, even 140 characters is sufficient. It has triggered a wholly different ecosystem after 23 years (SMS was conceived in 1985).

Twitter and the tiny URL’s are the shortest and fastest way to get the message through. Whatever Twitter has achieved in less than years is unimaginable in 1985.

Initially, Hillebrand’s team could fit only 128 characters into that space, but that didn’t seem like nearly enough. With a little tweaking and a decision to cut down the set of possible letters, numbers and symbols that the system could represent, they squeezed out room for another 32 characters. (LA Times)

There is a technical limitation in terms of bandwidth to send text over telecom network. Operators have to use an unused yet low bandwidth to send the messages. That bandwidth can only fit 160 characters.

2 things were looked at before decide upon 160 characters :

1. Most of the postcards sent had 160 characters or less
2. Most of the email’s message was delivered with 160 characters or by the subject line itself.

Needless to say I found this piece via twitter. Thanks to @mashable’s tweet in 140 characters or less.

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