What is the maximum number of characters in a USSD message?

Question

I realized that the USSD message consists of 160 bytes. For 7-bit data encoding schemes, the maximum number of characters is 160 * 8/7, which gives 182 characters. I do not understand what is the maximum number of characters for UCS2 encoding. Usually this would be something like 160/2, but I have mixed information about this.

Answer 1

The maximum size of a USSD message is 160 bytes. For messages in the GSM 7-bit format, you correctly say that the limit is 182 characters. UC2 encoding for each definition is fixed at 2 bytes per character, so you should have no more than 80 characters.