Ian Harris, R.I.P

Ian Harris, one of the key contributors to the original 3GPP SMS specifications, passed away last week. Ian was one of the SMS pioneers and passion for all things related to SMS remained undimnished over the years. I had a first-hand experience of this last year while working on a proposal for support of SMS in Indian languages in 3GPP standards. He proved to be of tremendous help at every stage of this long and, at times, frustrating process. Starting from putting me in touch with other SMS experts, helping prepare the formal proposal, then ensuring that his colleagues backed us during the 3GPP meetings, presenting a contribution on our behalf when I was unable to travel to one of the meetings, arguing in favor of having Indian language character tables and much more. All this just because he was passionate about SMS and wanted it to evolve in order to meet the demands of its users around the world. I never met him in person but having exchanged many many emails last year, I considered him to be a friend and well-wisher. We were due to meet last summer during my trip to UK but it did not work out. This may be one of my life-long regrets.

Ian was a well-known figure in 3GPP circles, having worked for years in different working groups. A tribute to him has been posted on the 3GPP website.

SMS in Indian Languages

Here at CEWiT, we have been working for the past few months on a new 7-bit encoding for Indian languages, for use in SMS. Having gone through a number of iterations in various 3GPP meetings, the CT plenary recently approved the inclusion of the new Indian language tables in TS 23.038. So, handset vendors now have another option for encoding Indian language characters (the existing one was UCS-2). With 7-bit encoding, short messages in one of India's 22 official languages can have up to 155 characters, compared to 70 allowed with UCS-2.

Today's Times of India has a fairly detailed report on this, including an interview with the CEWiT Hon. Director, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi.