Portugal has ‘sent’ SMS for 27 years and peak consumption in 2012 with 27 million messages
The first SMS (Short Message Service) in the world was sent 30 years ago, on December 3, 1992, by the British Neil Papworth, telecommunications engineer at Sema Group Telecoms, in the United Kingdom.
The message, a “Merry Christmas” wish, was sent from Neil Papworth’s computer to the Orbitel 901 mobile phone of Richard Jarvis of Vodafone.
The historic moment reached a new level in December 2021, when the first 15-character SMS was auctioned as an NFT (`Non Fungible Tokens` or `Non Fungible Token`) for 107 thousand euros, during an event organized by the house Aguttes in France.
In Portugal, the messaging service was launched in October 1995, when TMN (currently MEO) and Telecel (currently Vodafone) were in the market for mobile operators, according to data sent to the Lusa agency by the Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM).
In October 1995, Telecel launched this functionality for the first time for contract services, those that were not prepaid, a small percentage of the customer base, told Lusa Nuno Taveira, former SMS product manager and `messages` on Vodafone.
The growth of SMS had one of its turning points in February 2000, when an agreement was signed between the three existing operators (after the incorporation of Optimus in 1998, currently NOS) to allow users to communicate between the different networks, see regulator.
The first data available from ANACOM are precisely from 2000, the year in which the number of SMS totaled 550 million, ie around seven SMS per active user per month.
The peak of SMS traffic was reached in 2012, a period in which each effective user sent 180 messages per month, in a total of 27,860,126 messages.
Still according to ANACOM data, this number has been decreasing. In 2021, there were 68 SMS sent per user effectively per month (-62% compared to 2012), for a total of 10,729,392.
Another turning point for SMS in Portugal is the introduction of pre-paid services, which allowed for the massification of the mobile service, I tell Lusa Teresa Salema, president of the Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações.
“We have to remember that the mobile network grows first in the higher segments. It is only from 1995, with the introduction of prepaid services, that we have a great massification and, at that time, also the written messages appear with more intensity and reach achieve absolute records”, referring to, marking the surroundings of “the famous MIMO, developed at the time by Portugal Telecom in the laboratories of Aveiro”.
There are currently more popular messaging alternatives, such as ‘instant messages’, such as through the Whatsapp or Messenger applications, available for ‘smartphones’ and which combine text with the possibility of sending images, children, documents or the popular Gifs .
In 30 years, SMS has had a peak in use and is on the way out. But its use for advertising and marketing, in terms of security, as an authentication factor, or the creation of a specific spelling, such as the use of `k` to say `que`, are legacies that still persist today.
The president of the Portuguese Communications Foundation said that, however, the technology that is currently available to society involves the integration of several factors.
“There are three things that are necessary, because in addition to equipment, access to networks is needed, with the capacity and speed that we currently have with fiber optics or 5G. And the `cloud` (cloud). These are the three things that we make sure we have the services we currently have”, he analyzed.
Teresa Salema, who at the beginning of the 1990s was at Companhia Portuguesa Rádio Marconi and has a three-decade career linked to the sector, also defended that technologies are present to “improve the quality of life, but also the health of the planet” .
Although there are now more efficient ways of sending messages, Teresa Salema points out that all technologies eventually find their space.
“The fixed network has its space. And SMS also have its space”, he stressed.
In the case of SMS, its popularity and mass spread through mobile phones ended with another service that had gained its protection previously: pagers or “beep-beep” service, he recalled.
“Nowadays, we only have here at the museum what a written message of that type was like. It was almost like a telegram, therefore, it was even shorter than an SMS”.
Moreover, the Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações, now 25 years old, has the dual mission of “preserving and showing all the heritage of the communications sector in Portugal”, through the Communications Museum, in Lisbon.
Teresa Salema said that the history of communications is “much longer” compared to the decade in which the SMS was born, and in Portugal it is located “five centuries ago, in 1520, with the establishment of the mail service”.
“At the time, King D. Manuel established the postal service exactly to support Portuguese maritime expansion. Because, as is evident, any economic development is based on a communications network”, he stressed.
The Communications Museum currently has an exhibition that marks the 25th anniversary of its foundation, where it is possible to “mix and experience objects” of old and working technologies, such as the typewriter, fax, telex machines and some GSM equipment , including a Nokia with the famous `Snake` game.