system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When a text shows up hours after its send time where has it been that whole time?
gpt
The delay could be network or the phone. When you send a text, it goes to the tower and the tower sends the message to your recipient. SMS messages are treated with lower priority than voice and data. 
I read a research somewhere which showed around 5% of text messages are never delivered.