What Does Text Message Encoding Mean?

Adam H.

June 03, 2020 16:26

Question

What does message encoding mean?

Answer

Messaging encoding is how your text message is sent to the mobile phone carriers. The type of encoding used influences how many characters can be used in each message segment.

When you send a text message Sakari automatically looks at each character in your message to identify its encoding type and the overall message length. Based on the encoding type and length, the total number of segments used is determined.

The two types of SMS encoding used by Sakari are:

GSM-7 Encoding – GSM7 is the encoding type most commonly used, and supports more than 128 commonly letters and symbols. Each segment is limited to 160 characters maximum.
UCS-2 Encoding – UCS2 uses 16 bits to encode each character. Each segment is limited to 70 characters maximum.

How will my text message be encoded?

When you send SMS messages with Sakari, we will automatically use the most compact encoding possible. If you only use GSM-7 characters, your messages will be encoded at GSM-7. If any non GSM-7 characters are included, your entire message will be encoded at UCS-2, which limits each message segment to 70 characters each.