SMS is required

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

> I did not know they charge you extra for SMS in the US, since SMS  
> is the data transfers that happens between pressing the 'call'  
> button and the connection to the other phone (actually SMS was a  
> hack found out by Nokia people back in the '90's)

It was part of the GSM standard right from the beginning. The first  
SMS was transmitted by Vodafone in UK in 1992. And has its roots in  
the ISDN D-channel protocol as well as Packet Radio from the 80ies.  
This all finally goes back to IBM SDLC and the Internet UDP protocols  
from the 70ies. It was "just" moved from a wired to a wireless  
environment.

So much to "innovations" :-)

Nikolaus