The Coder's Guide to SMS

SMS is a standardized service for sending short messages over wireless networks using standardized communication protocols. The first SMS message was sent by Neil Papworth on December 3, 1992, to his co-worker Richard Jarvis. Today, over four billion people send text messages every year, and companies increasingly use them to reach their customers due to their convenience and high open rates. Companies also use SMS for two-factor authentication, mobile marketing, customer service, alerts, and reminders. The SMS standard allows sending 160 characters of text or 70 characters in Unicode, but longer messages are broken into multiple shorter ones. SMS messages do not go directly to the recipient's phone, instead they first get sent to a Short Message Service Center (SMSC), which looks up the recipient and sends the message to them. MMS is another technology for sending multimedia content over wireless networks, and OTT applications like iMessage and WhatsApp are examples of "Over the Top" or instant messaging that do not require cellular network connectivity. SMS has several advantages over OTT applications, including being able to send messages to anyone with a phone number and not relying on internet connectivity. The Vonage SMS API documentation is available for those who want to send SMS messages programmatically in just a few lines of code.