One apostrophe can triple your SMS bill.

transcript

One character can triple your SMS bill. On every single message. Not a typo. A curly apostrophe. Because SMS is priced per segment.

Plain English uses GSM-7. 160 characters fit in one segment. Hindi, emoji, anything else? UCS-2. Only 70 fit. Too long? It splits, and each part holds 67.

Take a 150-character English payment alert. Straight apostrophe? One segment. Now swap in one curly apostrophe. One character, and the whole message flips to UCS-2. At 67 a part, that's three segments.

But here's the catch. That apostrophe isn't in one message. It lives in the template. Not one message. Every message from it costs three times as much.

A 95-character English OTP? One segment. The same alert in Hindi? UCS-2, and 95 is over 70. Two. And our alert with the curly apostrophe? Three.

One character can triple the cost. So count segments before any template ships.

Full breakdown in the lecture.