GSM Alphabet

All text contained in an SMS message either uses the GSM character set, UCS2 or national language shift tables (see GSM 03.38 for details). Up to 160 x GSM characters or 70 x UCS2 characters will fit into a single SMS. Where a text message is larger than the capacity of a single SMS then segmentation and reassembly headers in each SMS are used to allow the message to span multiple SMS.

The GSM default alphabet is shown in the following tables.

	0-	1-	2-	3-	4-	5-	6-	7-
-0	@		SP	0	¡	P	¿	p
-1	£	_	!	1	A	Q	a	q
-2	$		“	2	B	R	b	r
-3	¥		#	3	C	S	c	s
-4	è		¤	4	D	T	d	t
-5	é		%	5	E	U	e	u
-6	ù		&	6	F	V	f	v
-7	ì		‘	7	G	W	g	w
-8	ò		(	8	H	X	h	x
-9	Ç		)	9	I	Y	i	y
-A	LF		*	:	J	Z	j	z
-B	Ø		+	;	K	Ä	k	ä
-C	ø	Æ	,	<	L	Ö	l	ö
-D	CR	æ	–	=	M	Ñ	m	ñ
-E	Å	ß	.	>	N	Ü	n	ü
-F	å	É	/	?	O	§	o	à

Further characters are supported using an extended character set that is accessed using the escape character (0x1B). These characters are as follows:

	0-	1-	2-	3-	4-	5-	6-	7-
-0					|
-1
-2
-3
-4		^
-5							€
-6
-7
-8			{
-9			}
-A
-B
-C				[
-D				~
-E				]
-F			\

 

Sources:

1. ETSI TS 100 900 (GSM 03.38 § 6.2.1) / 3GPP TS 23.038
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38

Notes:

1. Based on the above tables showing the GSM character set, to represent the Euro (€) character the values 0x1B 0x65 are used.
2. In GSM mobile networks up to 160 x GSM characters (i.e. 160 x 7-bits = 1120 bits) or 70 x UCS2 characters (i.e. 70 x 16-bits = 1120 bits) will fit into a single SMS.