[asterisk-biz] DID's with messaging?

[John Todd]

This is possible, and I was almost ready to sign the contracts to do  
this ~1 year ago.  Alas, the company for I was working with has since  
crumpled and I was never able to get that particular service feature  
off the ground despite being very close.

Level3, in concert with a company called Syniverse, can offer this  
service.  They deliver calls to your facility via SIP, and then  
Syniverse enables SMS messaging for those DIDs.  I am prohibited by  
NDA from giving out pricing or really any other details, but I'll say  
that it was very reasonable (back then) and seemed to be the right  
solution for connecting Asterisk or any other VoIP platform to the SMS  
side of the world.  Transmit and receive, using the e.164 address of  
the DID you had purchased from them.  The downside was that it was  
exclusively with Level3.

The Syniverse product is called SMS-IG, and messages could be  
delivered via SMPP or SMTP.

I really think they've done a staggeringly poor job in talking about  
this product, since nobody seems to know about it.  I really had to  
turn over a lot of rocks to find this - I would have thought they  
would have been very proud of the product, but nary a peep has come  
out of Level3 that I could find, at I could find, and Syniverse seems  
to wrap the product up in a variety of marketing-babble that makes it  
unclear exactly how one would purchase this service and what the  
complexities are.   Maybe other companies are using this now and just  
keeping quiet, since it's a competitive advantage.

Have at it.  Let me know how any of you fare with the offering - I'm  
interested to see if it is an actual possibility still.


JT


Other references:
http://www.mail-archive.com/asterisk-users@lists.digium.com/msg213012.html
http://www.syniverse.com/business-solutions/solutions/SMS-Interworking-Gateway-IP


On Feb 16, 2009, at 1:47 AM, Nir Simionovich wrote:

> Hi Guys,
>
>   Having worked in the mobile industry, the SMSC isn't the only
> component here that is required. First off, you'll need that your
> DID provider be able to carry the unique signaling nature of SMS via
> your IP connection.
>
>   Now, let us imagine that you're using an MVNO, you'll need two
> distinct connections to the MVNO, one for VoIP and one for SMS. In
> addition, at the carrier level, most carrier will prefer the SMPP
> protocol - not HTTP or another XML based variant. The reason is that
> SMPP is a standard support by almost any mobile switch manufacturer.  
> At
> that point, you'll need to use something like Kannel in order to
> facilitate that specific inter-connect.
>
>   Now, let us say that we want to traverse an SMS from the IP world,
> connected to Asterisk, to the mobile world. Apart from an SMS MT
> provider, we'll need a proper connection. If we want to do this  
> directly
> from Asterisk, we'll either need a direct connection to the SMSC and  
> the
> SMS MT provider level (I doubt that will happen), or some form of an
> external interface means - again, defeats the purpose I believe.
>
>   Integrating SMPP into Asterisk is interesting, but I'm not sure that
> it is a worthwhile task for the project to take in any case.
>
> Nir
>
>>> [snip]

---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/