From a tiny start with the world's first message - the words "Merry Christmas" sent from a personal computer to a mobile phone - on December 3, 1992, the use of texts exploded after 1998 when the UK's four major mobile-phone companies introduced "pay-as-you-go".
Now four billion people around the globe use SMS - Short Message Service - to communicate with each other. But, for the first time since their inception, text messaging volumes have declined.
New figures from the media regulator Ofcom saw two quarterly declines - by over a billion - in the volume of SMS messages sent in the UK.
The volume of texts sent in Britain reached a peak of 39.7 billion at the end of last year, but have now dropped to 38.5 billion - the first recorded decline.
The pattern is similar in the US where volumes of texts have also dropped, according to a new report.
"For the first time in the history of mobile phones, SMS volumes are showing signs of decline," 'The Independent' quoted James Thickett, Ofcom's director of research, as saying.
"The availability of a wider range of communications tools, like instant messaging and social networking sites, means people might be sending fewer SMS messages, but they are communicating electronically more than ever before," Thickett said.
Technological change is now so rapid and so unpredictable that no one can say how we will be communicating in 20 years' time. However the SMS messages have been defining texts of the past two decades, the reports said.
Limit of 200 SMS-es per day reintroduced by Supreme Court
Once again, a mobile phone cannot be used to send more than 200 SMS-es in a day. The Supreme Court has brought back the quota today with an interim order.
The quota was introduced in 2011 by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) , but was lifted by the Delhi High Court in July this year which said that the restriction undermines the right to freedom of expression for private citizens.
The quota was introduced originally to deter unsolicited SMSes by telemarketing companies.
It had been challenged in court by Aditya Thackeray, whose grandfather Bal Thackeray was president of the Shiv Sena and died last month.
These bulk SMS 's are only commercial one. To most of the subscribers they are nuance . When they do not want any disturbance the SMS cones and disturbs them. There is a clause which says if the subscriber do not.Want unsolicited mails, they could inform the service provider that they not want these mail by sending SMS saying they do not want such mails. Even after statutory 45 days limit they do come. Hence theses restrictions are all the more important. But for persons like Adithya, a political figure they are required. But public grievance should be answered first.
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