The not-so-short story of SMS

I still vividly remember the day in 2002 when our family got its first mobile phone. And yes, I mean one mobile phone for the entire family. It was the indestructible Nokia 5110, the undisputed champion of ruggedness. Having one of those transparent plastic belt-holder cases was the ultimate badge of honor. That same evening, we got a SIM card from Hutchison Essar, and our world changed. Of course, Dad wasn’t too thrilled about the hefty charges for outgoing calls, and he was downright annoyed when he had to pay for wrong-number incoming calls.

It’s almost unbelievable now, but back then, we were shelling out around ?5 per SMS! We had to cram our messages into 160 characters to avoid being charged for two SMSs. Short Message Service (SMS) became a way of life, helping us dodge the ?9 per minute for incoming calls and a whopping ?18 per minute for outgoing ones.

As Hutchison Essar morphed into Hutch and later Vodafone, our family remained loyal. But it was Reliance’s CDMA phones and their dirt-cheap tariffs that really shook things up. Suddenly, we were flooded with offers like 10,000 free SMSs with a month-long recharge. It was a revolution.

Fast forward to a new decade, and now, SMS is free and unlimited in most recharge packages. But when was the last time you actually sent an SMS to someone?

Will SMS disappear in the coming years? The answer is a resounding no.

SMS has simply evolved from humble person-to-person messages to predominantly Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS. Predictions suggest that A2P SMS will generate billions in revenue. The SMS story is transforming from one of sheer volume to one of value.

Person-to-person SMS is losing ground to chat apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger. But telecom companies are still cashing in on SMS through businesses that use it for notifications, verifications, and transactional messages. Promotional SMSs remain a reliable way to grab a user’s attention, even if only for a split second—though, let’s be honest, most of us delete them in bulk.

Recently, mobile companies have even revamped their SMS interfaces to be more visually appealing, with brand logos appearing next to the sender’s name. For example, Starbucks reaches out to its clients with customized text messages and web links detailing promotional offers. SMS has become a surefire way to communicate, provided the recipient trusts or at least recognizes you. Random SMSs? Not so much.

According to reports, the A2P segment has grown by 20% annually since 2014, reaching 210 billion messages in 2018 and projected to hit 265 billion in 2019. Just five years earlier, that number was under 100 billion.

A2P SMS is now universally accepted across industries—whether it’s alerts and OTPs from banks, subscriber info in offline retail, or delivery updates from food apps. The types of SMS range from transaction alerts to notifications to marketing.

As more people embraced digital transactions and started using apps, SMS became the go-to method for validation and authorization. While person-to-person messaging in India has plummeted, the rise of app-to-person messaging has breathed new life into the SMS ecosystem. Indian telcos charge app companies around 10 paise per message within India and ?1 for international ones. In a telecom sector under heavy financial stress, SMS revenue from B2B relationships has become a lifeline.

To sum it up, SMS is like a one-sided love affair—beautiful, with no expectations and nothing required in return. You can’t tell them to go away because, well, you don’t control their feelings. And that, in its own way, is kind of wonderful.

This is an old blog written by me and originally published on Medium & on my now-lost blog site: https://medium.com/@shashikant.pushpakar/the-not-so-short-story-of-sms-da976ed3c4e0