GSM alphabet 03.38, accepted in standard SMS

Modified on Tue, 10 Sep at 7:51 PM

The GSM 03.38 alphabet (Global System for Mobile) is a set of characters that was developed to facilitate the writing and transmission of SMS.


Through any of our sending methods, the GSM alphabet can be used to send standard SMS (SMS with a capacity of 160 characters). More information about SMS types and their capacity: Types of SMS messages.


This alphabet uses the following characters:


ABCDEFGHIJKLM
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklm
nopqrstuvwxyz
àÅåÄäÇÉéèìÑñò
ØøÖöùÜüÆæß012
3456789&*@:,¤
$=!>#-¡¿(<%.+
£?")§;'/_¥ΔΦΓ
ΛΩΠΨΣΘΞ


The GSM 03.38 character set includes several symbols in addition to those shown in the table above. However, each of these characters is counted as two characters, as it also includes an invisible escape character: ^ { } \ [ ] ~ | €


Finally, the GSM 03.38 character set also includes the following non-printing characters:

  • A space character.
  • A line feed control, which indicates the end of one line of text and the beginning of another.
  • A carriage return control, which switches to the beginning of a line of text (usually after a line feed character).
  • An escape control, which is automatically added to the characters in the list above.


Using any other symbols or characters not included in the list above will convert to SMS Unicode.

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