SMS (Short Message Service) is a communications protocol that allows the exchange of short text messages between mobile telephone devices. Supported by GSM (Global System for Mobile communcation)with GPRS and CDMA, SMS provides an inexpensive alternative (for network carriers) to voice calls.
A single SMS message can contain at most 140 bytes of data, so one message can contain up to 160 characters if 7-bit character encoding is used (Latin characters) or up to 70 characters if 160bit Unicode UCS2 character encoding is used (non-Latin characters). SMS text messaging supports all languages supported by Unicode (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean).
In addition to text, SMS messages can also carry binary data. In the Axeda Platform environment, SMS messages may carry data items and values or actuator commands for a tracking asset.