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Fact file: SMS

All you need to know about Short Message Service.

  • Staff Report
  • Published: 09:18 May 23, 2008
  • Gulf News

All you need to know about Short Message Service.

SMS stands for Short Message Service.

The first SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on December 3, 1992. It simply said “Merry Christmas''.

Nokia first mentioned the addictive qualities of text messaging in a 2001 global study.

The world record for sending a text message is held by Ang Chuang Yang of Singapore who keyed in an officially sanctioned sentence in 41.52 seconds.

Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand currently holds the World Record for the fastest blindfolded text message, sending it in 45 seconds.

The official sentence for world record attempts is: The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.

Average number of text messages sent per person per day in 2006 (According to the book Communities Dominate Brands): 15 in the Philippines, 10 in South Korea, 6 in the UK

Number of text messages sent globally: 17 billion in 2000, 500 billion in 2004 and 2 trillion (predicted figure) in 2008

Forty-three billion SMS messages were sent on January 1, 2008 across the world

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