THE SMS CELEBRATE THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY ON DECEMBER 2

USPA NEWS - SMS are 25 years old today! The testimony of Jean-Michel Huet, BearingPoint Partner On December 2nd, 1992, the first SMS was exchanged between two Vodafone technicians. Twenty five years later, the success is not going away. It is also an expanding means of payment in Africa.Written messages sent from mobile to laptop continue to be widely acclaimed worldwide: 8,000 billion SMS per year worldwide in 2016, or 22 billion per day or 150 million per minute .. or 2.5 million per second were shared in 2016 worldwide. It is estimated that the French traded nearly 200 billion in 2016. Jean Michel Huet, Partner Bearing Point stated

Written messages sent from mobile to laptop continue to be widely acclaimed worldwide: 8,000 billion SMS per year worldwide in 2016, or 22 billion per day or 150 million per minute .. or 2.5 million per second were shared in 2016 worldwide. It is estimated that the French traded nearly 200 billion in 2016. Introduced with the GSM or 2G standard 25 years ago, SMS (Short Message Service) is only a technical service for operators. to their customers. History has shown that they have seized it and that they have since spread around the world. THE TESTIMONY OF JEAN MICHEL HUET, BEARING POINT PARTNER IN CHARGE OF AFRICA---------------------- Here is the testimony of Jean-Michel Huet, BearingPoint partner in charge of Africa about the birth of SMS, twenty five years ago : "I had the chance to participate in the launch of SMS at France Telecom Mobiles, with the network Itineris at the time, today Orange. We did a market study and 85% of the French were not interested because they said "a phone is made to speak not to write" ... if we had listened to them we would not have launched offer or so at a low price! But telecoms is an industry where the marketing of the offer is very powerful. It was not until 1999 and the interoperability between operators (possibility to send an SMS beyond the same network ... because before it could do that from Itinéris to Itinéris or from SFR to SFR). And all of a sudden, there was an explosion in terms of uses. The SMS has become the essential communication of the 2000s, the main channel of the wishes of January 1, and a key element of interactive TV shows with premium SMS. For 10 years, we have been told of the death of the SMS for the benefit of other messengers (messenger, whatsapp) won in the end by the success of writing (40% of people under 25 never use the voice with their phone) . Yet the SMS is still there. Better globally it has never been used so much in emerging countries where it has become a communication tool or even payment with the "mobile payment" in Africa. At 25, SMS is still alive and developing new uses " Source: Bearing Point, by Jean Michel Huet