What are concatenated messages?

A concatenated short message service is used to overcome the limit on the number of characters that can be sent in a single SMS text message transmission (usually 160 chars).

With this method, the sending device divides the long message into smaller ones and merges it at the receiving end, with each message charged as a single SMS message. The complete message appears to the receiving user as a single long text message (a concatenated SMS message). On networks that do not support concatenated SMS, each smaller message is delivered as an individual SMS text message.

Concatenated message character count is reduced by 7 characters per message. Messages longer than 160 characters are reduced to 153 characters, while messages outside the GSM-7-character set (i.e., Unicode) are reduced from 70 to 67 characters.

How do you send a concatenated message?

Sending a concatenated message is no different from sending a message shorter than 160 characters. The mobile network will split the text for transmission and combine it back on the receiver’s mobile phone.

Jan 6th, 2022
1 min read