How SMS Works?(SMS Explained)

We use SMS as a means of communication in our day to day life. We receive or send important SMS through our phones. So in this article let's understand how SMS is sent & received between our phones.

What is an SMS?

SMS stands for Short Message Service. It is simply a way of communication and sending important messages. The "short" part refers to the character limit of an SMS which is 160 character. For other languages such as Chinese, it is 70 characters.

How Does SMS Work? How do we receive SMS to our phones?

Even if you are not talking or calling through your phone it is still constantly sending & receiving information. The phone is talking to the tower over the pathway called a control channel. The reason for this chatter is so that the cell phone system knows which cell your phone is in, and so that your phone can change cells as you move around. Every so often, your phone and the tower will exchange a packet of data that lets both of them know that everything is OK.

Your phone also uses the control channel for call setup. When someone tries to call you, the tower sends your phone a message over the control channel that tells your phone to play its ringtone. The tower also gives your phone a pair of voice channel frequencies to use for the call.

The control channel also provides the pathway for SMS messages. When a friend sends you an SMS message, the message flows through the SMSC(Short Message service center), then to the tower, and the tower sends the message to your phone as a little packet of data on the control channel. In the same way, when you send a message, your phone sends it to the tower on the control channel and it goes from the tower to the SMSC and from there to its destination.

The actual data packet also contains little things like a time stamp, the destination phone number, the format of message etc.

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