Short Message Service (SMS) in Afghanistan, Iran and the World

Communication is the process of transferring data with various communications transmitters (from a point, a person with a device) to a receiver (to others) provided that it would have an effect.

Human communication is very widespread in the world today. The development of communication, particularly electronic communications have a great impact in human relations, so that modern’s era is called the era of communication and today’s society is called the informational society.

One of the methods of electronic communications is the use of modern information and communication devices, such as mobile phones that have different characteristics and properties, and surely one of these is the use of short message service or SMS.

The SMS system was developed during the early 1990s for a news system of mobile phones.

The technical installations of short message service in Iran launched and then developed in late 1381 (early 2003), in the telecommunications company.

SMS (Short Message Service) was launched in Afghanistan by Telecommunication Company in 2003 after the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan led by President Hamid. These services have been growing with an increasing speed in most countries of the world.

Today the SMS service is used as new means of communication in various spheres of economic, political, social, and cultural and daily affairs in Afghanistan, Iran and other countries of the world.  It has attracted the investors, traders, individuals, and majority of people in the society, especially the youths and political activists and the reason is also the following advantages.

Quickly transferring a message or sending messages individually or group for clients and audiences, low cost, permanent access to an audience, friends or customers, gaining the customer/audience’s confidence, high levels of recall, remembering the message, and the possibility of saving the message and sending it to others.

Using SMS in Afghanistan and Iran, is one of the activities that telecom companies can make the most benefit from it.With all these advantages, it can be said that the Short Message Service (SMS) as a means of modern communication and information, speedy and timely information has its own great impact on all economic, political, cultural, social, civic, and so on affairs. It also has its negative impact in regards of abusing people, defamation of characters (people), atmosphere of tension and disturbing the public, undermining the national and religious beliefs of people and above all privacy breaches of Afghan and Iranian citizens.

Sending or receiving ethical message, harassing and annoying people through short message service of mobile phone is not only in Afghanistan and Iran but also many other countries are facing with this problem.

The reason for expansion of Short message service (SMS) among young Afghans is creating a realm of freedom and privacy and individual autonomy. Especially some of the young Afghan boys and girls that their families are from extremist, religious and none social groups and they have imposed strict monitoring on their children but this oversight through the use of Short Message Service of Cell phone has been broken/failed.

The other reason is the expansion of entertainment, and the need of young people for having fun, pleasure, humor, irony/joke, poetry and wit, charming and interesting short messages (SMS) of sender and exchanging romantic and love messages. For example, according to figures released by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, almost 50% of SMS messages are fun and jokes in Iran.

The language that people use when exchanging messages, it is indeed the language of wit, brevity/abbreviation, dialogue, snook with which SMS is exchanged for religious, literary, romance, irony etc. awareness.

The difference between the short message services of a telephone conversation is in a way that the first one is written, it plays the best role when there is no telephone conversation.    For example, oral conversation on the phone cannot be used in many universities and during academics and working hours and written SMS messages can be easily used to exchange messages.

SMS messages through mobile phones with Internet services

Recently, new applications have been created by the big companies of the world, they can be used with smart phones connected to internet or Wi-Fi to send and receive free of charge messages.

Today a large number of users who have smart phones can use various free applications via WiFi and Internet, such as iMessage, Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Tango.

These free service providers have snatched the profit from the pockets of large traditional corporations of SMS and similar to SMS Messenger and KakaoTalk.

Facebook Messenger, Viber, tango etc. are currently free and the use of these applications have grown significantly in many countries and even in Afghanistan and Iran.

Anyway, in conclusion we can say that electronic communication has changed the new society to an era of communication and information society.

Today, short message service among young people is considered as a need of individual or group for information in order to achieve greater prosperity, better living, build and strengthen relationships and friendships, satisfy the requirements of curiosity, make the power of notion, and shaping public opinion and Short Message Service (SMS) has played an important role as a new means of communication and information in the globalization era.

Author: Mohammad Azim Ulfati