Table of Contents
Fred Hillebrand, a Wireless Hall of Fame inductee and SMS inventor, is the editor of a scholarly work on the history of SMS. This compact volume provides a detailed account of a brief period (1986–1992) when a group of European operators decided to implement SMS. They faced a considerable challenge as they were adopting the GSM requirement for device interoperability.
"Every SIM card must work on every terminal; every terminal must function on every network; interworking of all networks for message/call routing and for the support of international roaming must be possible."This paragraph reveals the secret sauce of SMS. Interoperability was a requirement, which necessitated standardization. Until 1987, one year after the SMS standard adoption, standardization demanded unanimity.
The DGMH Group
A group of 130 delegates, forming the Drafting Group on Message Handling (DGMH), carried out much of the standardization. Over the course of six years and fifty meetings, these representatives meticulously addressed every detail of implementation.
Hillebrand shares three takeaways from the decisions the group made:
1. Apply pragmatism—not only principles.
2. Take responsibility for service standardization.
3. Give priority to simplicity at the expense of complexity.
The last lesson is particularly important.
When I met Fred at the 2017 award dinner, he emphasized that ensuring simple and low-cost implementation was crucial for adoption. This was particularly true during a time when devices and terminals were prohibitively expensive. He appeared to suggest that the RCS efforts at that time (2015–2017) had lost sight of this goal.
Finally
My optimism about RCS stems from the reality that it took fifteen years for SMS to be fully implemented and adopted after standardization. Our challenge as an industry is to maintain a focus on simplicity. Amidst all the bells and whistles of embedded video and scrolling carousels, we must not forget that straightforward delivery confirmations are the true game-changers. Just ask any iMessage user.