What is SMS?

SMS is a great breakthrough in mobile communications and Malaysia ranks 6th in the world for SMS traffic. Who would know, a basic text messaging tool called SMS could have gained world wide popularity with 2.4 billion users (source: Wiki)

The idea of SMS was 'invented' in 1984 by a Finnish guy called Matti Makkonen who received the Economist Award for Innovation for this contribution in 2008. Thats 24 years late for an award... better late than never.

Generally, SMS messaging is broken down into:

1) MO - Mobile Originating - A SMS sent FROM a mobile phone. This is the message typed/sent by a mobile user.

2) MT - Mobile Terminating - A SMS sent TO a mobile phone. This is the SMS message that you receive on your mobile phone.

In a simple manner, when I send an SMS to my mother, I compose a MO. This MO is delivered to the telco, which then sends an MT to my mother.