What do you mean by 'SMS-enabled'?
SMS-enabled means that only devices with SMS technology built into them will be able to access and utilize SMS. Most mobile device manufactures such as Ericcson, Motorola, and Nokia offer SMS-enabled products.
What is GSM? What is a GSM Network?
GSM stands for Global Systems for Mobile Communication. SMS resides on GSM networks for SMS communication.
Back in the early 1980's, analog cellular telephone systems were growing rapidly in Europe. Each country started developing it's own system. These systems were incompatible with everyone else's equipment and operation. It was not a good situation. For one, mobile equipment was limited to limited to their national boundaries. Thus, markets were limited for each type of equipment.
The Europeans realized this early on, and created a group to propose a new, universal system. This new universal system became GSM. Eventually commercial services became available in the early 1990's and GSM networks have spread worldwide.
GSM is a digital system, which is what allows SMS features to exist. Most countries use the GSM standard—the United States is one of the few countries to favor use of CDMA and TDMA standards over GSM (though there are GSM networks throughout the US). CDMA and TDMA allow extremely limited SMS capabilities.
GSM allows for messages to be sent from point-to-point, or in a cell-broadcast mode (point-to-omnipoint).
So, is GSM to remain the standard for SMS communication?
Probably not.
The world requires more and more Internet functionality from their mobile devices. And GSM, in all its complexity, is having a hard time keeping up. GSM was never designed to service text information, let alone large amounts of text such that the wireless Internet would provide. Using GSM for anything more than SMS would become a slow and cumbersome method.
With that said, it seems that GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is being touted as the new best thing. GPRS would allow the sending of Internet information through mobile devices at a high speed. Experts believe that GPRS will be capable of delivering information at a speed of up to 100,000 bits per second.
Currently, GSM can deliver information at a speed of 9,600 bits per second.
What's point-to-point?
A point-to-point SMS message is where a user sends a message to another subscriber in their service. Once their message is sent, an acknowledgement of receipt is provided to the sender.
What's cell-broadcast mode?
Cell­broadcast mode, or point-to-omnipoint, SMS messages are those such as traffic updates or news updates that are sent by services to multiple subscribed users within a given cell area