Message Character Encoding

GSM

Here is a list of all acceptable characters in GSM, or 7-Bit, encoding along with the number of characters each takes up in the message. Some of the symbols are encoded into two characters because they require an additional escape character to be valid in the message.

Encoded into One Character:

Column 1

Column 2

Column 3

Column 4

  • a - z

  • A - Z

  • 0 - 9

  • ä

  • Ä

  • å

  • Å

  • à

  • è

  • é

  • Ñ

  • ñ

  • Ü

  • ü

  • ù

  • ö

  • Ö

  • ò

  • ì

  • Θ

  • Ç

  • Ø

  • ø

  • É

  • "

  • ¥

  • Φ

  • §

  • æ

  • ß

  • >

  • ¥

  • Γ

  • #

  • Λ

  • @

  • Δ

  • ¡

  • !

  • ¿

  • ?

  • £

  • _

  • $

  • Ω

  • %

  • &

  • Ψ

  • Π

  • (

  • )

  • /

  • ¤

  • -

  • =

  • Ξ

  • *

  • :

  • '

  • Σ

  • +

  • ;

  • Æ

  • ,

  • <

  • .

  • carriage return (\r)

  • new line (\n)

  • space

Encoded into Two Characters:

Column 1

Column 2

  • |

  • ^

  • €

  • {

  • }

  • [

  • ]

  • ~

  • \

  • form feed (\f)

Unicode

An inclusion of any character that is not in the list of GSM acceptable characters will force the entire message to be encoded using Unicode. This encoding changes the maximum character count per SMS segment from around 160 to around 70, depending on the number of segments. This could lead to drastic increases in the price per message if left unchecked.

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