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.

Read more about it:
>>	iLoop Mobile offers this academic review of CSCs as a downloadable PDF, "Understanding the Common Short Code : Its Use, Administration, and Tactical Elements."
>>	U.S. Wireless Carriers Debut Universal Short Codes
>>	You can find many common short codes in the US Common Short Code WHOIS Directory.
>>	In 2006, John Edwards became the first presidential candidate to use a common short code in his campaign.

Last updated on: Jul 17, 2007