Are SMS doomed?

An SMS is a short text message sent by a (usually) employing a cellular phone to another phones or devices capable of reiving notifications. It consists of 160 7-Bit (or 140 8-Bit) characters. The first SMS was sent in the UK 1992. First commercial services started 1993 and growth was slow initially. It took until the late 1990s to really take off, making it the most used cellular service. It reached its peak around 2012.

But with the event of Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Whatsapp and similar social media platforms traditional SMS found themselves loosing ground rapidly.

The end of SMS?

Do we see the death of SMS? At some point in the future, probably. But today

• there are still many people using SMS
• you need internet to use Facebook, Whatsapp and others whereas you only need a mobile phone to send a traditional SMS
• some European banks have one time SMS sent to a customer before he can to a transaction
• SMS uses GSM. It's just there, no maintenance needed to keep it alive

Thus I wouldn't worry that SMS will be gone any time soon.

Receive SMS Online

Several web services, such as most email provider or social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook require that you register a phone number with them. While they all promise not to use it for other purpose than "your" security, they on the other hand are all making money with advertising. In my opinion you cannot be sure that they don't sell or use them themselves in the future to send some commercial offers. This is one of the reasons some services provide free or paid SMS numbers you can anonymously receive a confirmation code without having your real phone number exposed.

Some five ago I had some success receiving SMS from an email provider to validate my account. But in recent attempts I failed receiving codes via free online SMS services. First, the company I tried to gain access to my account after I lost my credentials rejected most numbers I tried. Said there were too many attempts with that number; simply this number is blocked, third party numbers not allowed and other reasons. Secondly, when an SMS number was finally accepted and I went back to the SMS online provider to refresh the web page, the SMS with the code would not show up. Not even after hours. What I did then was calling that number to see what happens. Often the line was busy. Or number was out of business. But when I got through a voice told me I have to register, although the web page itself said it is without registration. One number might even had been reassigned to a different person. I was for example calling a number in the USA but somebody in Spanish said "Hola"!

Is it just me or are free SMS numbers more or less a dead end these days? If so that leaves only to try a paid service. But here you have to think about if it's really worth to pay some $10 if you only want to receive a few SMS. I say not.