Goodbye, SMS, There's a New Messaging Sheriff in Town
SMS messaging can be very handy and very frustrating. The standard has been around since the 1980s, and not much has changed since the late '90s. That's kind of crazy given the forceful progress in other mobile technologies. Here we stand at the cusp of enjoying gigabit 5G networks, but our text messages are still limited to 140 characters and outdated security protocols.
Well, that's about to change. All four of the major American networks just came together to announce their move to a thoroughly modern text messaging standard known as the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI).
The CCMI service does not rely on a separate wireless backchannel the way SMS does. Instead it piggybacks on the ordinary wireless broadband network, packaging far longer and more media-rich messages into bundles easily managed by standard network protocols.
Source Fool.com