[asterisk-biz] 8 ports GSM PCI Card or Gateway

[Steve Totaro]

Steve Kennedy wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 06:29:43PM -0500, Steve Totaro wrote:
>
>   
>> Would this work in the US?  I want to use it primarily to send SMS.  It 
>> seems that all of the SMS relay companies charge too much.  It would be 
>> great to stick my T-Mobile SIM into something like this, route through 
>> asterisk to Kanal.  Unlimited SMS is $14.99/mo with T-Mob.
>> Anyone know what could accomplish this?
>>     
>
> You can get a Siemens TC/MC35 GSM terminal and they'll do SMS quite well
> (only one SIM per unit), Nokia make one as do Falcom and others.
>
> I think Junghams make a 4 port card.
>
> You'll be limited by throughput on the units though as they can only
> handle a certain number of SMS per minute (probably 10 to 20). You also
> have to beware that SIMs have a limited numbers of writes and will stop
> working after a while (some terminals allow "sim buffering off" which
> will hopefully use the terminal's memory to store SMSs).
>
> Utilising a gateway (like Kannel - note spelling) and a SMPP or equiv
> protocol may give you higher rates, but there'll be a per SMS charge.
> The phone networks I believe use AA19 agreements for SMS termination
> (well in the GSM world) and that's a set termination rate between
> operators - somewhere between 2 and 3.5p (4 and 7cents), but diffificult
> to find out, unless you're an operator.
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>   

What are the limitations of a SIM as far as writes?  Is there some sort 
of hard number?

Thanks,
Steve