When did texting start? A short history of SMS, from 1992 to today

Texting started on December 3, 1992, when engineer Neil Papworth sent the words "Merry Christmas" from a computer to a Vodafone executive's handset in the UK. Text messaging was designed in the mid-1980s and launched in the early 1990s, but it did not become popular until the late 1990s and 2000s, once phones made typing easier and carriers let texts cross networks.

This post covers when texting started and how a carrier side feature became the main way businesses reach customers. It runs from the 160-character limit and T9 through MMS, iMessage and RCS to the registration rules (A2P 10DLC) that now govern every business text in the US. If you build software that texts on behalf of your customers, the last few sections matter most, because the history explains why the rules look the way they do.

When did texting start? December 3, 1992

The first SMS was a test. Papworth typed "Merry Christmas" on a PC because handsets of the time could not compose messages. Richard Jarvis received it on an Orbitel 901 phone. He could not reply, because the phone had no way to type one.

The idea is older than the message. Work on a "short message service" inside the GSM mobile standard started in the mid-1980s. Engineers noticed that the signaling channel phones used to set up calls sat idle most of the time and could carry small bits of text.

When was text messaging invented, then?

That depends on what you count:

• 1984 to 1985: GSM working groups define the concept and the character limit.
• 1992: First SMS sent (computer to phone).
• 1993: Nokia ships phones that can send texts from the handset.
• Mid-1990s onward: Carriers launch consumer SMS, at first only within their own network.

So "invented" points to the mid-1980s, and "started" points to 1992.

Why a text is 160 characters

The limit came from Friedhelm Hillebrand and the GSM group. The way it is usually told, Hillebrand typed out sample sentences and postcards and found that most fit in about 160 characters. The technical constraint matched: the signaling channel carried 140 bytes of payload, and 140 bytes in a 7-bit alphabet (GSM-7) holds exactly 160 characters.

That 1980s decision still affects what businesses pay. Carriers meter segments, not messages:

• One segment is 160 GSM-7 characters.
• Longer messages split into 153-character parts, because each part loses a few characters to header data that reassembles them.
• One emoji or other non-GSM character switches the whole message to Unicode, which drops the limit to 70 characters (67 per part).

A worked example of the 1985 limit in today's money

Assume a 140-character appointment reminder sent to 1,000 opted-in contacts on Ready's Standard rate of $0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment:

• Plain text: 140 characters = 1 segment. 1,000 × 1 × $0.0075 = $8, plus 1,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees.
• Same text with one emoji: Unicode, 70 characters per segment (67 multipart), so 3 segments. 1,000 × 3 × $0.0075 = $23, plus 3,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees.

One emoji triples the bill. Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending, so those never push a message into Unicode. Emoji still do. Our SMS segment cost breakdown on 10DLC fees covers the rest of the line items.

T9 and when texting became popular

Early texting was painful. Phones had number keypads, so typing a single "s" meant pressing 7 four times. Usage stayed low through the mid-1990s.

Three changes made it popular:

1. Predictive text (T9). Tegic Communications developed T9 in the mid-1990s and it appeared widely on phones around the end of the decade. You pressed each key once and the phone guessed the word. Typing a sentence went from tedious to tolerable.
2. Cross-network texting. In the US, carriers did not let texts pass between networks until around 2001 to 2002. Before that, you could only text people on your own carrier.
3. Cheap bundles and TV voting. Unlimited or bundled text plans spread in the 2000s. US audiences learned to text a vote to a short code when American Idol made it a weekly habit in the early 2000s.

When did texting become popular in the US?

The usual answer is the mid-to-late 2000s. Industry surveys around 2008 reported that the average US mobile user was sending more texts a month than making calls. Europe and Asia got there several years earlier, because SMS was cheap and interoperable sooner.

MMS, smartphones and the blue bubble (2002 to 2011)

MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) arrived in the early 2000s and let phones send photos, audio and longer text. It worked, but quality was poor and carriers priced it separately, so plain SMS stayed dominant for years.

The iPhone (2007) and Android (2008) brought full keyboards and threaded conversations, and texting volume climbed again. In 2011, Apple launched iMessage with iOS 5. It sent messages over the internet between Apple devices, showed them in blue, added read receipts and typing indicators, and fell back to green SMS when the other person was not on an iPhone.

That split between blue and green still shapes how people judge a text. A blue message with a name and photo looks like a person. A green message from an unknown 10-digit number looks like it could be anything.

RCS and the long fight over the green bubble

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is the carrier industry's answer to iMessage. It adds typing indicators, read receipts, high-resolution media and larger group chats to standard texting. The GSM Association published a common "Universal Profile" in 2016, and Google pushed RCS through Android's Messages app over the following years. Apple added RCS support in iOS 18 in 2024, so texts between iPhone and Android finally gained many modern features. They still show green on iPhones.

For businesses, RCS is still settling. SMS remains the format every phone in the US can receive.

From person-to-person to business texting: A2P and 10DLC

For most of its history, texting was person-to-person (P2P). As smartphones spread, businesses started sending application-to-person (A2P) traffic: reminders, alerts, verification codes and marketing. Much of it went out over ordinary 10-digit long codes built for people.

Spam followed. The US already had the TCPA (1991), which puts statutory damages of roughly $500 to $1,500 per unwanted text on the table. Carriers added their own layer. Around 2021, the major US carriers began requiring businesses that text from standard local numbers to register through A2P 10DLC: a brand registration (who you are) and a campaign registration (what you send and how people opt in). Enforcement tightened over the following years, and unregistered traffic now gets filtered or blocked.

If you're new to it, our 10DLC explainer covers the basics. If you run a platform that texts for your customers, who registers the brand when you text for your customers is the question to settle first.

A short timeline

What business texting looks like today

A business text today has to clear several checks before it reaches a phone: a registered brand and campaign, a number tied to that campaign, opt-out handling, quiet hours and content filtering. Each check exists because of a stage in the history above.

We make Ready, a messaging API and platform for software companies that text on behalf of their own customers. Each of your customers gets a sub-account with its own numbers and its own 10DLC registration, and you send SMS and iMessage through one REST API:

POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <key>
Idempotency-Key: <any UUID>

{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Your order #1042 has shipped.", "consent_attested": true}

Here is what is included and what it costs:

• Registration handled in-app. No setup fee. The charge at submit is the first month, $25. After that it's $25/mo for registration + $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. See the 10DLC registration API docs.
• Compliance built in. STOP replies are honored across campaigns, and campaign and drip sends that land in the recipient's quiet hours are held until the window opens; an API text is held only if sending opens within about 6 hours, otherwise it is refused with 409 QUIET_HOURS_BLOCK. TCPA-litigator and DNC scrubbing and landline validation are available. When switched on, each adds $0.003 per segment. Both are off by default. All of this reduces risk, but compliance stays the sender's responsibility.
• Blue line (iMessage). $99 a month per line, plus 6 cents a segment. It needs no 10DLC registration. Each line can start up to 50 new conversations a day, and texts to Android phones go out as regular SMS. It is not Apple Messages for Business, so it can text first. More in blue bubble texting for business and the blue line docs.
• Pricing. Standard is $0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee. That excludes the compliance surcharge. Replies you receive are billed the same way. Enterprise pricing is custom, so talk to us.

Ready is not the right fit for everyone. If all you need is the lowest per-segment price and you're happy to build registration, opt-outs and quiet hours yourself, a raw CPaaS API like Twilio (around $0.0083/segment) costs less per text. What we sell is the registration and compliance work already done, plus sub-accounts, so you don't build it again for every customer. The A2P SMS API overview walks through that tradeoff.

FAQ

Was texting a thing in 2001?

Yes, but mostly outside the US. By 2001 texting was already big in Europe and Asia. In the US it was only just opening up, because carriers began letting texts cross networks around 2001 to 2002.

What year did texting become popular?

Late 1990s in Europe, and the mid-to-late 2000s in the US. US surveys around 2008 showed texts outnumbering calls.

When did texting start?

December 3, 1992. Neil Papworth sent "Merry Christmas" from a computer to a mobile phone on the Vodafone network in the UK.

When was texting invented?

The concept was designed between 1984 and 1985 by GSM standards groups, including Friedhelm Hillebrand, who helped set the 160-character limit. The first actual message followed in 1992.

When did texting become popular?

In Europe, by the late 1990s. In the US, in the mid-to-late 2000s, after cross-carrier texting (around 2001 to 2002), T9 and cheap text bundles. Around 2008, US surveys showed texts outnumbering calls.

Why are texts limited to 160 characters?

The signaling channel carried 140 bytes, which holds 160 characters in the 7-bit GSM alphabet. Longer messages split into 153-character segments, and an emoji drops each segment to 70 characters (67 multipart).

Do businesses need to register to send texts?

In the US, yes, if they text from standard 10-digit numbers. A2P 10DLC registration covers the brand and the campaign. Unregistered traffic is filtered by carriers. iMessage via a blue line does not need 10DLC registration.

The practical takeaway

Texting started as a spare-capacity trick on a phone network, and many of its rules are leftovers from that start. The 160-character segment still sets the price. Carrier filtering grew out of years of spam on numbers built for people, which is why business senders now register.

If you're building texting into a product, plan for three things up front: segment counts in your pricing, registration for every customer brand, and opt-out and quiet-hour handling. You can try Ready by signing up. The first 20 one-to-one texts are free, so use them before you register. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it.