Character Set Checker
The characters you use determine the encoding type and affect how many SMS units are required to deliver your message. When using message templates with variable data, the final character count may vary by recipient.
Messages can contain up to 2000 characters in total, but will be split into multiple SMS units based on the encoding used.
Standard Message Lengths
- GSM-03.38 character set: 160 characters per SMS unit
- UCS-2 character set (Unicode characters like Chinese or Arabic): 70 characters per SMS unit
Longer messages automatically split into multiple SMS units (up to 10 concatenated messages).
Maximising Character Usage
Some UCS-2 characters can be converted to GSM equivalents (e.g. “…” or “-”), allowing you to send longer messages per SMS unit. However, certain characters cannot be converted, including some ASCII characters and all emojis (😊).
Character Checker
Auto Encoding for SMS Messaging
Discover how The Optus SMS Suite’s intelligent tools automatically encode UCS-2 characters as GSM-7 while your SMS send!
Email OptusSD@modicagroup.com to enquire, today.
Encoding & Concatenation
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