Ever wondered why your text messages sometimes fail to send, show up pixelated or don’t appear at all on the other person’s end? It might not be your phone, but your carrier’s messaging support.

Taylor worked with AP from 2018 to 2025, most recently as Google Editor. The technology underpinning early mobile text messaging began development in the 1980s. The short message service (SMS) ...

The first SMS text message was sent on December 3, 1992. Part of an early Vodafone test, the message was sent from a computer to a GSM handset on the carrier’s network. That first text read: “Merry ...