USELESS INFO: WHY THERE IS A 160 CHARACTER LIMIT IN TXT MESSAGING?

I bet you have a cellular phone and chances are, you have more than one. It seems like everybody has cellular phones nowadays and it is no big deal. It is a norm. This was a far cry during the early 90’s wherein having one, albeit the soap bar appearances and massive weight is such a big thing.

No wonder that the Philippines was once (if still not) touted the texting capital of the world. A report in 2008 states that Filipinos are sending 1.39 billion SMS messages everyday. Just imagine, if even only half of it are accounted to be of charge at 1 php per SMS. This which would translate to around Php 625 Million per day or or roughly Php 19 Billion in a month. Yaman ng Smart, Globe and Digitel.

You are very aware that there is a certain limit in characters that you can send per single SMS. The reason for doing such is because you simply need to put a limit for the economic model to be feasible. The bigger question would be is why the magic number 160? Having a this character limit means that an old cellular phone unit simply ends at this point, while the next generations cell phones thereafter may go way beyond this number. But if your message went over this limit, you need to pay another SMS fee for this purpose. But have you ever wonder why this is so and who the heck thought of it? With such precarious matter on hand, one might think that extensive research and studies were done to come up with this finding. You’ll be surprised that there wasn't.

During the development stage of the SMS, a certain Friedhelm Hillebrand, then the chairman of the non voice service committee of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) pushed for the 160 character limit. His and his group’s basis were pretty simple; he just typed random sentences, questions, phrases, and messages on his typewriter. He found out that most of it contained characters that are less than 160. They also observed that postcards often contained fewer than 150 characters. Furthermore Telex transmissions, which were prevalent during those times, were usually about the same length as postcards.

As simple as that and the 160 limit were conceived, signed, delivered and is being used today. So the next time your sms reaches the 160 limit, which practically means, another piso to the telcos, think of this man and his brilliant contribution to history.