short message service (SMS)

A store-and-forward service in telephony and data systems that allows the exchange of short text messages between end-user devices; the length of the message varies by language up to a maximum of 160 characters in the Latin alphabet. There are gateways from e-mail and Web to SMS, and from SMS to e-mail. The term “SMS” is sometimes also used to denote alternative text messaging services on a variety of smart devices that use data connections.