MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Why are SMS short text messages so darned short?

Bob Russell · 03-03-2006, 02:22 PM

I have a Verizon phone with SMS messaging, just like millions of other people. Mine happens to be a Treo 650, but hey, it's a phone just like all the others when it comes to text messaging. (Well, except for the fancy alarms and cool keyboard and great screen, of course!)

But when I have something to say that's longer than just "Meet me at Starbucks at 4pm", I run out of space. We seem to all just accept that, don't we?

My question is why we are under that rediculous limit with current technology, and where does that limit originally come from? Come on. You can't tell me that it's expensive or bandwidth consuming for cell carriers to expand the text messaging limits from around 160 chars or so, to something like 1,000 chars. We're talking simple text messages, not multimedia. One picture message probably takes way more than that much bandwidth. And what a huge difference in usability if we can type reasonably sized messages without having to make rediculous abbreviations and cutting it short after a single thought.

Is there some sunk investment in a technology that is hard to update? Is it a standard that's hard to reinvent? Or are the cell carriers just trying to keep us from having a nice easy way to stay in touch without adopting expensive email solutions. I mean, come one, they're making a mint even on existing SMS messaging fees... you'd think they would want to expand the service, not leave it relatively crippled.

I'd love to hear from someone that understands why we are living with this rediculous limit. Obviously, there's an international SMS text message containment law I don't know about, that evolved out of some global phone text messaging treaty intended to stop dangerous "text message pollution" in the environment!

03-03-2006, 02:22 PM	#1
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	Why are SMS short text messages so darned short? I have a Verizon phone with SMS messaging, just like millions of other people. Mine happens to be a Treo 650, but hey, it's a phone just like all the others when it comes to text messaging. (Well, except for the fancy alarms and cool keyboard and great screen, of course!) But when I have something to say that's longer than just "Meet me at Starbucks at 4pm", I run out of space. We seem to all just accept that, don't we? My question is why we are under that rediculous limit with current technology, and where does that limit originally come from? Come on. You can't tell me that it's expensive or bandwidth consuming for cell carriers to expand the text messaging limits from around 160 chars or so, to something like 1,000 chars. We're talking simple text messages, not multimedia. One picture message probably takes way more than that much bandwidth. And what a huge difference in usability if we can type reasonably sized messages without having to make rediculous abbreviations and cutting it short after a single thought. Is there some sunk investment in a technology that is hard to update? Is it a standard that's hard to reinvent? Or are the cell carriers just trying to keep us from having a nice easy way to stay in touch without adopting expensive email solutions. I mean, come one, they're making a mint even on existing SMS messaging fees... you'd think they would want to expand the service, not leave it relatively crippled. I'd love to hear from someone that understands why we are living with this rediculous limit. Obviously, there's an international SMS text message containment law I don't know about, that evolved out of some global phone text messaging treaty intended to stop dangerous "text message pollution" in the environment!