2025 marks 33 years since the first SMS was sent. In that timeframe, many innovations in the communications industry have come and gone. So, we ask John Hurley, Chief Product Manager, VAS and Signalling Security at Enghouse Networks, what does the future of SMS look like in 2025?
With Apple finally announcing plans for RCS, it looks like the RCS dream may actually come true. Is that it for SMS?
Not at all! Sure, for consumer messaging SMS will take a big hit. Once all MNOs are fully RCS-capable, most of the SMS between Android and iPhone users can then automatically flow via RCS. For that to happen completely, for all subscribers and networks, requires many stars to align but it is only a matter of time.
But SMS has had such challenges for many years and has not been about person-to-person messaging for quite a while. For a decade now subscribers with all types of devices and nationalities have adopted OTT applications for mobile messaging with friends. If anything, RCS may struggle to break the usage patterns that have evolved throughout its many abortive launches.
In the Smartphone era, application-to-person (A2P) or enterprise SMS became far more valuable to mobile operators than person-to-person (P2P) SMS. Its ability to reach all subscribers, regardless of device type or preferred OTT app, made a compelling case for its continued use and marked the second age of SMS.
SMS became the preferred mechanism for all types of internet, social media and financial services to send one-time-passwords (OTPs) and transaction confirmations. Many businesses and governments still use SMS for mass promotional campaigns, appointment and bill-payment reminders. TV & Radio stations and print media still interact with the public via SMS, for now at least. Many of these services can be supplanted by OTT or other mechanisms and RCS promises the advent of Rich Business Messaging to rival the ubiquity of SMS.
But other less visible use cases have developed for SMS over the years. SMS has had the capability to carry binary encoded messages that configure devices over-the-air (OTA) for 3 decades. This capability and its simple and lightweight protocols make it an ideal channel for machine-to-machine communications especially in SIM-based IoT solutions. These use cases support the third age of SMS, where SMS is no longer a consumer facing service, but SMS is for the machines.
Q: What kind of use cases do you mean?
First off, I need to make a distinction. There are many IoT services out there that rely on technologies that have nothing to do with SMS or traditional wireless networks. But some IoT services rely on mobile devices that contain SIM or ESIM modules very similar to those in the standard mobile handset.
For many years SMS has been used to configure handsets over-the-air, to activate new SIMs, modify access to data networks or to enhance roaming capabilities. With the proliferation of IoT services, all sorts of devices; vehicles, streetlights, irrigation systems, utility pipelines, wind turbines, and assembly-line robots contain SIM-based mobile modules which communicate with management systems and other devices in their networks.
In some cases, these devices upload or download massive amounts of data using internet protocols and for such purposes SMS is not required. However, if the device is in a vehicle which travels around, its access to data networks may need to be re-configured to ensure it has sufficient data access. SMS provides the mechanism for remotely configuring that access over-the-air.
In other cases, a device may be placed in an extremely remote location where there is limited network and power provision. To conserve battery power, it may operate in sleep mode for long periods but, when required, receive an SMS to wake it up and transmit or receive some data.
There are even cases where the communication required does not require large amounts of data and a simple SMS may be sufficient to perform the service in its own right.
Q: When it comes to mobile networks, what is all the excitement around IoT?
Connected IoT devices are growing significantly faster than non-IoT devices. It’s predicted that by 2025, there will be 3.5 billion cellular IoT connections [1], and at present, only 0.06% of devices that could be connected to the Internet actually are.
With mobile handset penetration at over 100% in many developed markets, CSPs are looking at the IoT as an exciting opportunity for growth. Even though the potential revenue from each connection will be minuscule, there is still a significant business opportunity ahead for communications service providers. The real opportunity won’t be about charging for the data, which in many cases will only amount to pennies per connected ‘thing,’ but in the services wrapped around it; configuration, software updates, security, SLA guarantees, performance monitoring, and analytics, just to name a few. SMS is another value-added service that operators will need to offer to their IoT customers, even though it’s been around for ages.
Despite decades-long speculation about its imminent demise, the importance of SMS was recognized by its inclusion in the standards for 4G and 5G networks.
[1] Forbes: Size of the IoT Market
