SMS Character Limit

[codybear]

Originally Posted by Link9228

True, actually, the place that I heard that a single 1 minute phone call takes as much data as 600 texts was from my local news. I've also heard that law makers are going to force carriers to lower the price of texts and MMS. They've actually doubled in price in the last few years. That will only affect people without messaging plans, but still, it's a step in the right direction.

yeah, but unless you own your own phone company,
there will be no justice.

[Link9228]

I've often thought about having my own internet or phone companies. I would really love to... but then there's all those costs you have to pay along with it.. haha

[z28marols1]

I got stuck reading the text messaging wiki article a lot longer than I originally intended... what I took away from it is the 160 char limit is to keep compatibility on a global scale. whereas most users in the US have access to unlimited messaging plans in which it makes no difference monitarily to our providers, a lot of providers in other countries are still charging per msg. so upping their limit will cut into profits.

I did find it interesting that for users who pay .20/msg are effectively paying $1300/MB for the data it uses!

[Link9228]

Exactly, a 160 character text message might be around 5 kb. It's just a way for carriers to get money from people who don't know any better.

[pgr73]

160 8bit characters = 1.28KB This is probably the packet size used. This keeps each message as a single packet. It is pure profit.

[frazell]

Originally Posted by Link9228

Not true. Many dumb phones nowadays allow for many more characters than 160. For example my razr could send up to 7 times the 160 character limit, and it was sent and received as one text message. According to an article I read, the 160 characters was a limit created back in the 80s when wireless networks didn't have much data to work with. Nowadays, a single phone call, lasting only one minute, uses just as much data as 600 text messages.

I'm actually trying to figure out how I can change the 160 character limit on my phone, because I know my network can handle WAY more than that in the form of a single sms.

Are you sure you were using SMS? I've seen a lot of dumb phones that will automatically choose SMS or MMS based on how long your message is or they make MMS the default option. The char limit on MMS is somewhere in the range of 1K chars compared to the 160 for SMS.

The 160 char SMS limit is related to networks using control channels. The same channels they use the "update" your phone and the tower. It was probably created in the 80s, but it is still the limit today.

[Link9228]

I'm positive that it's sent as an sms. Because when things are sent as MMS, they come up as pix and flix messages on your account, which I rarely have over ten. Often times, on my dumb phone, I would send a few hundred multi page texts a month. I think what verizon - verizon texting does is split them into multiple texts on one side of the server and stitch them back together on the other, all counting them as one text message. That would make sense as to why verizon - sprint doesn't work like this... Verizon has no way of stitching the messages back together on Sprint's network.

[Darkflame808]

Could it be also that because the SMS packet was designed so long ago that we might actually be losing space due to the fact before this big push on phones we were using the ESN number as an authentication and now we have meid's which take up more space?.

I don't know if esn or meid data is included in this packet but it just ran across my mind.