Commercial Text Messaging, from the Beginning…
by Neil Papworth
As a product architect for Airwide Solutions, I joined the company nearly 16 years ago as a designer and coder for our customer Vodafone. There were about 30 people, including myself, working on developing a short message service for Vodafone to use as a communications tool for its engineers. They were actually looking for a way for engineers to send each other information when they went to inspect raido masts.
On 3 December 1992 I sent the world’s first commercial text message. It read ‘Merry Christmas’ and went to the managing director of Vodafone. At the time Vodafone told us they needed a way for engineers to send each other information when they went to inspect radio masts. There was no talk at the time that this would be something ordinary people would use. No one dreamed at the time the resulting product would turn into a worldwide communications phenomenon.
Back then, the network could only handle around four messages per second – that was the kind of load they envisaged. Now some operators process 5,000 messages per second. Worldwide, it’s been estimated that billions of messages are sent every month. And the figure is growing all the time.
Texting has saved lives. People have been in trouble out at sea or up a mountain and summoned help with a message – you can send one even when your phone battery is virtually dead, when you aren’t able to make a voice call. And texts have been invaluable during major emergencies, including the London bombings two years ago.
Working in the software business, you often trudge along on a project and never hear of it again. So I’m proud to have helped design something that millions of people use every day.
Do I use text messaging? All the time. It’s so simple and discreet. When my daughter Jessica was born last October, I told friends and family all round the world of her arrival by text and was back in the hospital ward within a minute.
Airwide Solutions
