The way this works is more or less explained in the description. Most cell phone companies have an email address for their subscribers where if you email it, it will turn the email into a text message and send it to their phone. For example, I have Alltel and their email for this is xxxxxxxxxx@message.alltel.com (xxx being your Alltel phone number). All that's happening here is that your forums are emailing the user at their cell phone company's email address like above, which in turn sends them a text message.
Most all cell phone companies provide this service for free, and the messages sent to your phone through the email address don't cost you anything or count toward your messages. And of course, it's free for your forums to send email. It usually makes it free for everybody, even people who don't have a text messaging plan. Some carriers are different, though... particularly smaller ones outside the U.S., and they may charge for those messages. That's a small chance, though.
How can you help? If you'd like to see a company added that isn't on the list yet, go to their website and do some research to see if they have an email address like the one example I gave above for their subscribers which will send a text message to their phone for free. Then, send me the company name, country of service, an example phone number (so I can program the script for the number's length) and the email address and I'll get it added.
Thank you for the detailed explaination! But I think I have to disappoint some of you.
I know that in Germany all companies charge the (email) text message receiver for this service. Moreover that person has to activate that kind of service, otherwise he will not receive anything. The price is very expensive, each text message costs its receiver at least 19 Cents. I don' t know of any plan which provides this for free or for a flat rate.
Therefore the only way to provide text message service is to pay for sms gateways and charge your forum users. This reduces the costs of an sms to 7 Cent or even lower. The only problem is that you would need to charge the text message sender, if you don' t want to loose money.
I think that most messages are not as important that anyone would be willing to spent money on it, but if you allow the sender to input any numbers, so that he can also text message non forum users, this might be of interest. But I really don' t know. There are prepaid sms providers, internet sms providers and discount mobile phone plans, which led to low short message prices in the past years. There are even flat sms plans, so either your forum sms rates would be more expensive or only slightly lower. Overall I think there are still many people who pay at least 15 Cent/sms, so that these people might be willing to pay, if your service works well and is easy to use, eg address book.
I saw that iogames had Germany listed. I think that most messages cannot be received, since 99% will have deactivated email text messages (it is deactivated by default and nowadays with all that spam it is not advisable to activate it). I could not test, because it is not possible to input the full mobile number.
Why are you so eager to implement 3.7.0 compatibility? I think that everyone who has updated from 3.6 to 3.7 should update vb to the latest version anyway.
i found this site with many cel companies email addresses, including italians VODAFONE & TIM, but couldn't try that right now (i have neither simms)
even found that sending sms to (italian) TRE would work using cellnumber@tre.it but that needs to be confirmed too
still looking for some email address for WIND and, of course, the other 'new' cell companies, like coop, poste and auchan
would it be possible to add the first three companies? all of them work with 10 digits, as far as i can see on the web
i found this site with many cel companies email addresses, including italians VODAFONE & TIM, but couldn't try that right now (i have neither simms)
even found that sending sms to (italian) TRE would work using cellnumber@tre.it but that needs to be confirmed too
still looking for some email address for WIND and, of course, the other 'new' cell companies, like coop, poste and auchan
would it be possible to add the first three companies? all of them work with 10 digits, as far as i can see on the web
So, I just tried to email myself to my sms email address. As expected I received an error message:
Quote:
Unfortunately your mail to 123@... couldn't be delivered because the addressee currently doesn't allow mail reception on their mobile phone.
You may send the mail again. However, a successful delivery requires that the addressee allows mail reception.
Also the Edit SMS Options link is not showing up, the template was modified and I can clearly see the coding in the template.
That seems to be a common problem. I think I've worked it out, but I'm waiting to release an update until I get a little more done with this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jerx
Thank you for the detailed explaination! But I think I have to disappoint some of you.
I know that in Germany all companies charge the (email) text message receiver for this service. Moreover that person has to activate that kind of service, otherwise he will not receive anything. The price is very expensive, each text message costs its receiver at least 19 Cents. I don' t know of any plan which provides this for free or for a flat rate.
Therefore the only way to provide text message service is to pay for sms gateways and charge your forum users. This reduces the costs of an sms to 7 Cent or even lower. The only problem is that you would need to charge the text message sender, if you don' t want to loose money.
I think that most messages are not as important that anyone would be willing to spent money on it, but if you allow the sender to input any numbers, so that he can also text message non forum users, this might be of interest. But I really don' t know. There are prepaid sms providers, internet sms providers and discount mobile phone plans, which led to low short message prices in the past years. There are even flat sms plans, so either your forum sms rates would be more expensive or only slightly lower. Overall I think there are still many people who pay at least 15 Cent/sms, so that these people might be willing to pay, if your service works well and is easy to use, eg address book.
I saw that iogames had Germany listed. I think that most messages cannot be received, since 99% will have deactivated email text messages (it is deactivated by default and nowadays with all that spam it is not advisable to activate it). I could not test, because it is not possible to input the full mobile number.
Why are you so eager to implement 3.7.0 compatibility? I think that everyone who has updated from 3.6 to 3.7 should update vb to the latest version anyway.
Yeah, I've seen that it's the case that way with certain companies. That's why I said it's free most of the time. Maybe I can find a way to get cheaper/free messages to those places eventually, without requiring signup for a bunch of crap.
I'm trying to get 3.7.0 to work because some people report they are unable to upgrade from it. However, on my test 3.7.0 forums, the current product installed just fine. I've changed the installation method but haven't released it, like I said, until I get some more work done with this first.
SMS Capabilities (Text Messaging to Cell Phone from Forums) Details »»
If you need support or want information, email me at rob@robwoelich.com.
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06-21-2008, 06:14 AM
