The world’s first SMS (short message service) happened on the Vodafone GSM network 20 years ago on December 3, 1992, and Vodafone Ghana is marking the anniversary with two new SMS bundles for its valued customers.
The first SMS was in the United Kingdom from one Neil Papworth, using a personal computer, to Richard Jarvis using a Vodafone Orbitel 901 handset and the message was “Merry Christmas.”
Vodafone Ghana is therefore marking that historic event by introducing weekly and monthly SMS bundles on the Vodafone network to offer customers the opportunity to send more text messages across networks both locally and internationally.
Under the weekly bundle, customers can send up to 20 text messages across networks and to overseas for just 50Gp, and the monthly bundles allows customers to send 150 SMSs for only GHC5,
Vodafone said customers can simply dial *125*150# to subscribe to the monthly bundle or dial *125*20# to subscribe to the weekly bundle.
Meanwhile, since the first SMS was sent 20 years ago, various studies conducted across the world that as at the end of 2011, up to 7.8 trillion SMS had been sent across the world, and revenues generated from SMS is expected to reach US$150 billion by 2013, according to Informa.
SMS figures are expected to reach 9.6 trillion by the close of 2012, according to Portio Research.
The various studies also indicate SMS still remains king with 64.1% market share in spite of the emergence of mobile web-based messaging platforms such as BBM, WhatsApp, Viber, Tango and many others across the world.
It is expect that SMS would still remain king, but its market share would reduce to about 42% by 2016.
Vodafone Orbitel 901; the handset that received the first ever SMS in the world 20 years ago