sonunigam (Love Geek): He counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page, and came to a conclusion that each blurb ran on for a line 0r two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters. That became the magic number which set the standard for one of text messaging. *09-01-11 - 12:07:08
sonunigam (Love Geek): Friedhelm Hillebrand was the chairman of the nonvoice services committee within the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). He pushed forward the group's plans in 1986 and all the cellular carriers and mobile phones must support the short messaging service (SMS). *09-01-11 - 12:08:09
sonunigam (Love Geek): The committee took the assumption based on other two factors: For one, they found that postcards often contained fewer than 150 characters. Second, they analyzed a set of messages sent through Telex, a then-prevalent telegraphy network for business professionals. *09-01-11 - 12:09:56
sonunigam (Love Geek): Despite not having a technical limitation, Telex transmissions were usually about the same length as postcards. The committee finally decided on the 160 character length for text messages. *09-01-11 - 12:11:15
