CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1    Background of the Study
Computers with the power of the internet have thrived in aiding communication among people. The telephone system, which is the main communication system that was invented several years ago, had undergone a great improvement, so much that today we have fixed wireless phones, mobile phones and the likes. With the rapid development of mobile phones come several services like the Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and others, which are readily available and add to the usefulness of mobile phones. SMS in particular is widely used in communication, and more recently has been leveraged to provide several services like airline ticketing, banking services, commercial services like share and sell (an added service Provided by MTN Nigeria which other brands have adopted giving rise to me2u by Airtel, etc.,), where subscribers can easily share and/or sell airtime, and several others. SMS is a mobile technology that allows for sending and receiving text or even binary messages to and from a mobile phone.
In every organized system which is dependent on accurate time, information management, there is a need to have a system which can on its own serve the purpose of automatically sending alert text messages. Time management plays important role in the success of any venture like a university environment where limited spaces (lecture halls), time and people have to be managed for effective information delivery. It is important to let students and guardians have access to results and other relevant information without having to visit the school premises. People can easily be reached through their handheld devices such as mobile phone irrespective of their location. Hence, there is a need to develop a system that will combine available resources and reach people via short message service (SMS) using GSM module. Java is a portable object oriented programming (OOP) language which can be used to develop large-scale enterprise applications, to provide applications for devices like cell phones, pagers and personal digital assistants among many other purposes. In addition to using this OOP programming language for developing the application, C# programming language was also used to develop the desktop SMS application which generates updates and reminders from a time schedule based on contact details of members of staff and helps automate and document the process of sending information across an organized system at a reduced cost. The system architecture is shown in figure1 and it employed the use of SMS over circuit switched GSM network that allows the application to send and receive messages over the modem interface.