[asterisk-users] Emerging dilema? DID forwarding meets SMS

[Gordon Henderson]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008, Drew Gibson wrote:

> Gordon Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008, Karl Fife wrote:
>>
>>> We have a number of DID's that do the standard VoIP tricks: ringing
>>> multiple locations, findme-followme etc.  What is happening more and
>>> more is that customers call those DID numbers, and draw the reasonable
>>> conclusion that they are calling mobile numbers because they literally
>>> can HEAR that the called party is on a mobile.  Consequently many of
>>> those customers draw the conclusion that they can safely send SMS's to
>>> those DID numbers.  Naturally the SMS messages disappear into the ether.
>>
>> Er, they don't dissapear for me. I send a TXT to a landline, the phone
>> rings and there is a text to speech robot which reads it out to you, or,
>
>> Don't you have that facility?
>>
>> Maybe it depends on country and telco.
>
> Err, Gordon, you must be in a country from the 21st century.

The UK, and while BT do have their faults, they do have some handy 
features...

> North America is just beginning to emerge from the mobile Stone Age.
> Some people have heard of text messaging but most think you have to pay
> Blackberry to send emails.

I'm sorry. Keep banging the rocks together guys...

Last time I visited I was frustrated by the lack of TXTability - too many 
standards, too many carriers not giving you the full service... The weird 
thing is that if you have a more or less universal TXTing coverage it 
would literally take off overnight. It did in the UK when the 4 main 
operators got together and let TXTs pass between then. I think the latest 
stats are something stupid like over a billion TXTs a week in the UK 
now...

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/11/06/one_billion_text_messages_sent.html

However, I've just tried with my VoIP carrier and they just vanish. Might 
drop them an email and ask about it...

> I ran into the issues Karl mentions when trying to txt our ISP contact
> during our office move.
> Can anyone clarify how SMS to non-mobile numbers are generally handled
> in North America?
> Is it possible to have SMS delivered direct to your landline DIDs? Then
> have Asterisk relay it to the actual mobile DID.

If not, there's got to be a "killer app" in there somewhere if you can 
figure out a revenue generation mechanism...

Gordon