A Canadian acquires the first SMS in history for 107,000 euros | Economy

The first text message (SMS) in history, transmitted on December 3, 1992 by the telephone operator Vodafone, was sold at auction in Paris in the form of a digicode for 107,000 euros (about 120,000 dollars), according to Aguttes sales. . lodge. The curious piece, presented on a tablet, was acquired by a Canadian who works in the new technologies sector and whose identity has not been specified.

The buyer thus has a digital replica and the only original communication protocol that transmitted this telephone text message (SMS). Transmitted by Vodafone on December 3, 1992, the SMS is composed of 12 characters and simply says “Merry Christmas” (Merry Christmas, in English). Operator programmer Neil Papworth sent the message to a colleague, Richard Jarvis, who received it at the company’s Christmas party on his Orbitel 901 phone.

Although the first SMS was transmitted in 1992, the precursor was the Finnish engineer Matti Makkonen who, in 1984, during an informal lunch, had the idea of ​​​​creating a messaging system for mobile networks. During these years, different European countries were working on the creation of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), a standard for mobile technologies to work in the same way across the continent. The working group liked Makkonen’s idea, so the German Friedhelm Hillebrand defined the initial protocol and established that the writings would be 160 characters. In his eyes, enough to send effective communications adapted to both the size of the screens and the capacity of the networks of the moment.

Initially, SMS was designed for carriers to send service information to their customers. In other words, communication between users was not possible. These types of messages are called short message ended with a mobile (MT-SM). It was the Nokia company that developed the system as it is known today, with the mobile origin short message (MO-SM) that make it easier for any user to send an SMS to another, according to the Orange operator blog.

It was not until 1999 that operators commercially launched the SMS service as an alternative source of income, in addition to the main activity of calls, allowing the exchange of SMS between users of different companies.

a sad decline

For technical reasons first and to increase revenue later, operators limited text message sizes to 150 characters, long before Twitter became famous for its 140 characters per tweet. Users have started to see the benefits of this new system, which avoids making calls, which are much more expensive, whereas text messages cost 25 cents in Spain.

To save characters, a new language full of abbreviations, initials and acronyms was invented, which young people appropriated, but which aroused the wrath of language teachers and the Royal Academy itself. In 2007, SMS reached its peak. 15 million SMS were sent every minute worldwide, and it was by far the most profitable service for operators, since its cost was close to zero since it used little bandwidth.

But the appearance of smart phones (smartphones) in 2007, led by the first iPhone, which made it possible to connect to the Internet thanks to the new 3G networks, began to mark the decline of SMS. Messaging applications like WhatsApp appeared, whose main advantage over SMS was that they were free. The proliferation of instant messaging applications has eclipsed SMS as a method of interpersonal communication and has been its last straw. So much so that they stopped being charged and began to be included in all operator tariff plans for free. There were several attempts to restart the SMS, but they failed.

According to the CNMC, WhatsApp is now the main means of communication for Spaniards: 64% send messages several times a day via this application. On the other hand, barely 2% recognize sending SMS. In fact, more than 60% of Spaniards never use this service.

However, businesses and governments continue to prefer SMS over WhatsApp due to their greater degree of security and reliability. Banks have used it extensively to confirm payments in line and public authorities use them for all notifications to citizens, from notification of a fine to an appointment for the covid-19 vaccine.