How many characters in a text message?

One of my staff sent me a text, a joke about Santa.

When the bill came, he (well, me really coz it's a work phone) was billed
for three texts.

I finally managed to get through to Orange (are committed to providing
excellent customer service) - only took me two weeks - and the lady there
said that if you send a 'long' text, it uses up so many characters that it
counts as more than one text
It took up 22 lines on my NK5140.

Is the lady being 'economical with the truth' or what?


--

J B

Thus spaketh J B:
> One of my staff sent me a text, a joke about Santa.
>
> When the bill came, he (well, me really coz it's a work phone) was
> billed for three texts.
>
> I finally managed to get through to Orange (are committed to providing
> excellent customer service) - only took me two weeks - and the lady
> there said that if you send a 'long' text, it uses up so many
> characters that it counts as more than one text
> It took up 22 lines on my NK5140.
>
> Is the lady being 'economical with the truth' or what?

1 SMS text is 160 characters, if you use longer texts, then you will be billed
for each 160 characters.


--
For £5 when referred to easyMobile contact me via
http://www.south-east-birmingham.tk
www.dodgy-dealer.co.uk

{{{{{Welcome}}}}} wrote:
> Thus spaketh J B:
> > One of my staff sent me a text, a joke about Santa.
> >
> > When the bill came, he (well, me really coz it's a work phone) was
> > billed for three texts.
> >
> > I finally managed to get through to Orange (are committed to providing
> > excellent customer service) - only took me two weeks - and the lady
> > there said that if you send a 'long' text, it uses up so many
> > characters that it counts as more than one text
> > It took up 22 lines on my NK5140.
> >
> > Is the lady being 'economical with the truth' or what?
>
> 1 SMS text is 160 characters, if you use longer texts, then you will be billed
> for each 160 characters.

Pedantically, you'll be billed for each group of up to 160 characters.
A full stop following a 160 character message will cost you an extra
10p (or whatever you're charged per text message).

So if your text is gonna be 161 characters long you may as well spend the
whole of the next 10p (or whatever it is per message) and talk away right up
to 320 characters

"Poldie" <Poldie@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135268397.795302.120460@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com...

> Pedantically, you'll be billed for each group of up to 160 characters.

Doh!

T'was 375 characters (sad me, I just counted them!!!)

375 / 160 = 2.34

:-(


--

J B

Thus spaketh purple pete:
> So if your text is gonna be 161 characters long you may as well spend
> the whole of the next 10p (or whatever it is per message) and talk
> away right up to 320 characters


Yeah, If I am going to be one or two characters over the 160 limit, I will
then go back and try and shorten some of the words, if this can't be done,
then I will add to the text. I currently pay 3p or 5p per text depending on
who I am sending to and therefore which phone I use.


--
For £5 when referred to easyMobile contact me via
http://www.south-east-birmingham.tk
www.dodgy-dealer.co.uk

Thus spaketh J B:
> "Poldie" <Poldie@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1135268397.795302.120460@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com...
>
>> Pedantically, you'll be billed for each group of up to 160
>> characters.
>
> Doh!
>
> T'was 375 characters (sad me, I just counted them!!!)
>
> 375 / 160 = 2.34
>
> :-(

So that will be 3 text messages.

And the Tax man will probably pay the bill anyhow!!

:-)


"{{{{{Welcome}}}}}" <bhx___spam@trapped___hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:L9Cqf.13332$iz3.1847@text.news.blueyonder.co. uk...
> Thus spaketh J B:
> > "Poldie" <Poldie@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1135268397.795302.120460@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com...
> >
> >> Pedantically, you'll be billed for each group of up to 160
> >> characters.
> >
> > Doh!
> >
> > T'was 375 characters (sad me, I just counted them!!!)
> >
> > 375 / 160 = 2.34
> >
> > :-(
>
> So that will be 3 text messages.

"purple pete" <dmrt46NOSPAM@clara.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1135271193.5254.0@eunomia.uk.clara.net...
> So if your text is gonna be 161 characters long you may as well spend the
> whole of the next 10p (or whatever it is per message) and talk away right
> up to 320 characters

All of the above is actually incorrect, you need control characters to
determine who the message was from, what message ID it's linked to, etc, so
you don't get 3 x 160 characters by any means.

jb@privacy.net declared for all the world to hear...
> One of my staff sent me a text, a joke about Santa.
>
> When the bill came, he (well, me really coz it's a work phone) was billed
> for three texts.
>
> I finally managed to get through to Orange (are committed to providing
> excellent customer service) - only took me two weeks - and the lady there
> said that if you send a 'long' text, it uses up so many characters that it
> counts as more than one text
> It took up 22 lines on my NK5140.
>
> Is the lady being 'economical with the truth' or what?

No.
--
Regards
Jon

{{{{{Welcome}}}}} wrote:
> Thus spaketh purple pete:
> > So if your text is gonna be 161 characters long you may as well spend
> > the whole of the next 10p (or whatever it is per message) and talk
> > away right up to 320 characters
>
>
> Yeah, If I am going to be one or two characters over the 160 limit, I will
> then go back and try and shorten some of the words, if this can't be done,
> then I will add to the text. I currently pay 3p or 5p per text depending on
> who I am sending to and therefore which phone I use.

Of course, there's no reason, other than the loss of profit to the
networks of course, that phones don't compress text messages so that
they take less space to fit. You get a pretty good compression ratio
out of plain text, especially if most of the words are in the t9
dictionary. I guess we'll have to wait until we're not limited to the
phone's software and can instead use our own programs to send text
messages/data.

"Poldie" <Poldie@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135283843.188567.213650@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com...
>You get a pretty good compression ratio
> out of plain text, especially if most of the words are in the t9
> dictionary.

How do you know if the receiptian's phone has the same version of T9 and/or
even the same dictionary to correctly decode your encryted message?

Clueless2 wrote:
> "Poldie" <Poldie@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1135283843.188567.213650@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com...
> >You get a pretty good compression ratio
> > out of plain text, especially if most of the words are in the t9
> > dictionary.
>
> How do you know if the receiptian's phone has the same version of T9 and/or
> even the same dictionary to correctly decode your encryted message?

I don't.

To be really pedantic, 1 SMS text is 160 * 8 bits (i.e. 160 bytes or
octets). If your phone sends in Ascii or GSM Character sets (where 1
character = 8 or 7 bits) the you will get 160 characters per SMS. If
however your phone sends Unicode text (as most Symbian OS phones will
do if you enter non-ascii characters in your message), where 1
character = 16 bits, then you may only get 80 characters per SMS.

But your Orange CS lady was not being economical with the truth.

Incidentally, on older phones which do not support SMS concatenation,
the message in question would have appeared as three separate
messages.

Fascinating stuff telecoms - I'll go back to bed now!

Regards

Pete F

J B wrote:
>
> One of my staff sent me a text, a joke about Santa.

[snip]

My mobile co (T-Mobile http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/ ) offers the facility
on its website (once you've registered etc) to send text messages from
the website as if they came from the handset. Apart from the added
functionality of being able to use an ordinary keyboard and being able
to edit text more easily, it has a counter showing how many characters
are available (counting down from 160), and shows you how many messages
will be needed once past the first 160 characters. Quite useful
really. Don't know if other mobile cos have this on their websites,
although there are plenty of other ways of sending text messages via
websites; however, the point of this posting was to mention the counter.

Allan