15 years of the SMSC … and still going strong

PLANO, Texas – July 25, 2007 – The mobile phone industry is today celebrating the 15th birthday of the Short Message Service Center (SMSC), the principal application behind text messaging first brought to market by Acision in 1992. The first ever SMSC was introduced as a product designed primarily to deal with the demands and improve reliability of a developing mobile industry, and in that year the first of many deals was signed with Telenor, one of Europe’s leading network operators.

Acision has evolved the SMSC infrastructure from a basic ‘SMSC box’ to a complete next generation, IP-based SMS architecture, centered on Acision’s IP SMSC. This enables text management, a wide range of differentiating service scenarios and a single rack capacity of 16,000 messages per second that can grow to virtually unlimited levels. SMSC innovation has never stopped, with current state of the art, future-proof, IMS-enabled platforms that can help operators improve quality of service, reduce costs and offer exciting advanced messaging services. Its value today is as crucial to the market as ever before.

In 1992, SMSC version 1.0 had a capacity of 10 messages per second which was soon quickly surpassed through ongoing innovation to improve capacity, reliability and accessibility. By 1999 the mobile industry saw the introduction of the first high performance SMSC, also launched by Acision with what was then an incredible 50 fold capacity increase to 500 messages per second. Such capacity speeds have now been greatly exceeded by today’s further 32 fold capacity increase, achieved by the latest Acision IP SMSC.

Over the last 15 years Acision’s SMSC has become the leader of the messaging market, as shown by their first ever customer Telenor, who remains a customer to this day and has just deployed the most recent SMSC release, a testament to the value the SMSC has for operators offering a high-quality SMS experience. Acision’s SMSCs are now responsible for processing more than half of all global SMS traffic.

Despite the rapid evolution of the mobile market, SMS is still the most important value-added service for operators. For operators looking to provide subscribers with robust messaging services, today’s mix and match platform means they can specify SMS capacity to meet their requirements. It is this scalability that makes the SMSC cost effective and adaptable to both growing and mature markets. Even in the most developed markets, such as Western Europe where SMS service penetration has reached 90%, SMSCs are vital to operators seeking to differentiate themselves through high-quality enhanced messaging services.

Steven van Zanen, VP Marketing for Intuitive Messaging at Acision commented: “Mobile messaging contributes significantly to the total mobile service revenues of almost every network operator on the planet, and the phenomenal evolution of the SMSC over the past 15 years has been a direct factor to the overall success of SMS. However, we’re not done yet, as Acision is constantly looking ahead with our open IP based architecture to improve performance without limits, enable new and converged services and continue building on our 15 year track record as the market leaders and innovators of SMS.”

"SMS is poised for continued aggressive growth here in North America, and Acision remains the top choice for high-performance SMS solutions," said Wayne Irwin, President, Acision, the Americas. "Operators are scaling up their messaging capacities quickly to stay ahead of demand, and are also looking to supplement traditional SMS services with new, value-added services, such as our Message Plus offering. Acision’s messaging solutions have long supported the market’s best-performing messaging services, and we’re pleased to still have a leadership role here 15 years later.”


About Acision
Established in June 2007, Acision launched with more than 300 clients, serving over one billion customers worldwide. Renowned for its progressive, exciting and agile philosophy of innovation along with assured service delivery, Acision enables network operators, service providers, broadband operators and content owners to increase revenues, enhance customer loyalty and capitalize on the opportunities offered by convergence. With over 43 years of experience, Acision leads the market in Intuitive Messaging, Intelligent Charging, Content Enablement and Customer Intelligence Management. Acision is the partner of choice in high volume mobile data services with over 50 per cent of global messaging traffic generated through its platforms.

Acision was formed following the purchase of LogicaCMG’s Telecoms Products business for £265m (US $525m), by a consortium led by Atlantic Bridge Ventures and Access Industries. The company employs approximately 1,700 people in 22 countries across six continents, and launched as a half billion US dollar company. More information is available at www.acision.com.