A common short code (CSC) is a short telephone number, usually consisting of five digits, that
is used to address SMS and MMS
messages from a cellular
telephone. Common short codes may also be called mobile short codes or short numbers. Each
common short code is designed to be unique to each operator.
CSCs are used for additional wireless services like
television voting, polling, ordering ringtones, making donations and queries to Google's SMS search engine. CSCs are
typically billed at a higher rate than SMS or MMS messages.
Although CSCs have been popular in Europe for years, they only gained wide-spread adoption in
the United States after their use as a voting method on the immensely popular "American Idol"
television show. Cross-carrier CSCs were launched in the United States in 2003.
A similar but unrelated term, shortcode, refers to a pseudocode
interpreter for mathematics problems used on BINAC and UNIVAC.
This was last updated in July 2007
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