Short message service center

A Short Message Service Center (SMSC) is a network element in the mobile telephone network. Its purpose is to store, forward, convert and deliver Short Message Service (SMS) messages.

The full designation of an SMSC according to 3GPP is Short Message Service - Service Center (SMS-SC).

Basic Trajectories of SMS are

The tasks of an SMSC can be described as

When a user sends a text message (SMS message) to another user, the message gets stored in the SMSC (short message service centre), which delivers it to the destination user when they are available. This is a store and forward option.

An SMS centre (SMSC) is responsible for handling the SMS operations of a wireless network.

SMSCs can be used to interface with other applications, for example a spreadsheet can interface with the SMSC allowing messages to be sent SMS from Google spreadsheet, or to send SMS from Excel. Inbound messages to a long number or shortcode can also be passed through the SMSC allowing m2m communications or Telematics.

An SMS message is stored temporarily in the SMS center if the recipient mobile phone is unavailable. It is possible on most mobile handset to specify an expiry period after which the SMS message will be deleted from the SMS center. Once deleted, the SMS message will no longer be available for dispatch to the recipient mobile phone (even if it becomes online). The validity period should be regarded by the handset user as a request, as the SMSC itself can be configured to ignore or otherwise handle message delivery schedules.

The SMS sender needs to set a flag in the SMS message to notify the SMS centre that he wants the status report about the delivery of this SMS message.

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