SMS
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Bip-bip-bip, beeep-beeep, bip-bip-bip. The sound indicating the arrival of yet another text message rang out across the crowded pub, cutting though the rumble of conversation and the clatter of glasses. How many people knew what that sound actually means, I wondered. SMS, in good old-fashioned Morse Code, standing for Short Message Service, although almost nobody calls it that these days. The bloke whose phone had just beeped put down his pint, picked the Nokia off the table and casually flicked the cover open with his thumb. His face twisted into a smile as he read the message, nodding his head and stroking his beard thoughtfully. After a few seconds, he turned the screen to show it to his companions. They displayed a variety of different reactions: some laughed aloud, some chuckled silently with their shoulders heaving, while yet others reacted with a nod and a thoughtful silence. The recipient then pressed a few buttons on the keyboard, presumably to forward the message to some contacts of his own. Soon, it seemed that every phone in the place was alerting to the arrival of a message. Beeps, buzzes and ring tones of every kind erupted throughout the public house, including that immensely annoying one announcing "A Message from the Dark Side, there is," in a voice vaguely like that of Yoda from the Star Wars films. This twenty-first century instant communication technology jarred irritatingly, I considered, with the contrived but familiar ambience of the English country pub, with its atmosphere steeped in log fires, low beams and horse-brasses. No-one seemed to care. Throughout the bar, people interrupted their conversations, and rummaged in pockets and handbags for their phones to read the message. I watched as they demonstrated varied reactions on a theme of mild amusement and wry smiles, then almost invariably showed their companions - if they had any - to further amusement for all. Another topical text message joke doing the rounds, I thought. I suppose I must be a bit of a dinosaur - the green scales are usually concealed beneath my everyday clothing - but I do not regularly send or receive text messages. No-one sends me these jokes, although sometimes an acquaintance shows me one, or reads it out in the office across the low partitions which separate the desks. I laugh politely, of course, but I never ask for the joke to be forwarded on, and decline any such offer, suggested that they should save their money for someone who would appreciate the thought. Now, everyone who knows me even slightly does not even bother to ask. Oh, I know how to text, of course, and I do send messages very occasionally: to warn that I will be late for a meeting at work, perhaps, or sometimes to announce that I will be late home - best to avoid the "your dinner's in the dog" scenario with the good lady wherever possible. When I do send a message, it is always properly spelt and punctuated, with capital letters and everything. Personally, I cannot abide that lazy abbreviated modern style which is apparently intended to make the sender's task easier while transferring the effort to the comprehension of the recipient. I sipped my drink and listened in a desultory fashion to my companions' conversation going on around me. The topic (football) did not interest me at all. I found myself wondering about the origin of these messages. It seemed to me that no-one ever seems to create these jokes; no-one types them in, laboriously keying in their own imaginative thinking for the amusement of their friends and acquaintances. Invariably, they are forwarded from someone else: a mate, a colleague at work, that bloke in the pub, even family members - I know that my wife gets a surprising number from her mother. Unlike messages from most people I actually knew, these joke messages are generally properly spelled and self-evidently written to be comprehensible to anyone with a reading age of six - exactly the target audience specified for journalists working for those red-top tabloid newspapers. Oh, there is often a liberal sprinkling of rude words - perhaps more than a time-served curmudgeon like myself would really like - but the general impression is one of a careful, even professional standard of writing. By this time, my companions' conversation had moved on to the even more boring topic of politics, comparing the reputation of the current Prime Minister, in power unelected and with his reputation for financial prudence apparently in tatters, with the previous one whose reputation seemed to be holding up well. A masterful example, I considered, of that old adage: get out while the going is good. I ignored their chat. Now, forwarding on text messages costs money. Oh, not much, of course, and it may even seem like it is free, if you have a "500 free texts" tariff - or whatever - included in your monthly fixed charges. Sending on all those jokes means that you feel that 500 text messages a month is a necessity, rather than a luxury, and worth paying for. This was not the first time that I had wondered whether the whole text message joke thing was a scam, a deliberate attempt by the mobile phone companies to increase the traffic on their networks and therefore their revenue. I knew that the incremental cost of handling an individual SMS message is effectively zero, since this is entirely automated. As is so much in the modern world, the price of this service - to the punter in the street - of sending a message is almost entirely unrelated to the cost to the telco. All these mobile telcos are chasing the magic ARPU - Average Revenue Per User - figure which is such an important measure of success for these companies - at least, as seen by the all-important stock market analysts. Their strategy is simply a matter of charging what the traffic will bear, which is why there are so many confusing packages, deals and offers. It would not be hard to arrange, I considered. All the mobile phone companies run numerous SMS Centres: basically computer systems that are the first hop for any new message from a phone. For there, the text is forwarded on fast optical fibre networks to the appropriate SMSC for the recipient's mobile network - which might belong to a different operator, of course, or even be in another country. The SMSCs support a bulk sending capability made available by the telcos to companies large and small, offering a reduced cost per message, although it is definitely not free. Of course this could be used - indeed, it has been used - for the sort of aggressive bulk-mailing scheme these days known as spam. Mercifully, this seems to be less prevalent than, say, junk email, probably because, for SMS, it is always the sender who pays. Even so, I could imagine some near-automated process, probably sited in some overseas call centre. A few people would be needed to maintain lists of subscribers to a "free joke" service, supported by a small group of talented copywriters paid to craft numerous short messages on the news of the day.
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Introduction