<P> The mentioned 3GPP document defines TBCD - STRING with swapped nibbles in each byte . Bits, octets and digits indexed from 1, bits from the right, digits and octets from the left . </P> <P> bits 8765 of octet n encoding digit 2n </P> <P> bits 4321 of octet n encoding digit 2 (n - 1) + 1 </P> <P> Meaning number 1234, would become 21 43 in TBCD . </P>

How many bits do most modern systems use to represent a standard character e.g. 'a'