“Merry Christmas”: this is the message of the very first text message sent, on December 3, 1992. The software developer Neil Papworth sent these early Christmas greetings via his computer to the mobile phone of a manager of the British telephone operator Vodafone. There was no keyboard on most cell phones at the time, so it had to be done via the computer.
In Belgium it was still 4 years to be able to send sms. It wasn’t until 1996 that Proximus launched an SMS service, with some pre-programmed messages. In 1998 SMS as we know it today followed and other operators also jumped on the bandwagon.