How can I get a delivery confirmation for sent sms?

Question

As far as it seems my iPhone 4 can't display any confirmation wether the receipient of my SMS got it delivered to their phone? Why was my first phone about 12 years ago able to do that but my modern iPhone isn't?
With the Messages rework including iMessage in iOS 5 I hoped to get such a function for normal SMS too but I'm frustrated you guys from Apple still didn't add that really basic and rudimentary feature.
Please add some small feature that shows "Delivered" below a SMS when my provider has delivered it to the receipients phone, like you already did for iMessage messages. If phones from the stone age can do that then it is a shame if the iPhone can't. I doubt it is much working time for you guys programming that thing.

Answer 1

Hrm well, you're right, it is a network feature. The lack of the automatic request should be fixed though in my opinion. I can't force any provider to add it but when it is available, then why should the device not make any use of it, at least if the user wants it explicitly?
I fear you're right too with your assumption that they'll probably never add that though. Someone already mentioned to me that the SMS has way not that importance in other countries than it has in Germany, especially for the younger generation. Our providers make most of their money not because people are using their phones for calling each other but for sending SMS to each other. Comparing iMessage with the traditional SMS is wrong in my opinion though. It is not that I wouldn't like iMessage, the idea behind it is great. The problem is, most of the people I'm texting with either have no smart phone at all or are using some Android model, so iMessage doesn't work with them and I have to use the traditional SMS system instead.
If the code for getting that confirmation is different from provider to provider, how can it be that other phone manufacturers provide that feature then? The only two possibilities are that those phones have a list of all providers of all countries in it, which I doubt because providers can change and can change their network features too but old phones weren't able to do any updates on the firmware like modern ones can do today or the other possibility would be that there is some international code or stuff too which is the same for all providers worldwide.