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

[John Todd]

On Oct 24, 2008, at 9:29 AM, Gordon Henderson wrote:

> 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


You're right, there is revenue there.  That's why carriers haven't  
done it yet - the FUD keeps them from offering the product.  Here in  
North America, we are lucky to even have the two stones to bang  
together to make calls.  Everyone is in love with short codes, which  
really kind of suck for low-cost, low-friction messaging since not  
every one of your users can have a short code for inbound messages.    
But the revenue is there for shortcodes, and mobile carriers are  
terrified that SMS-enabling ordinary E.164 numbers will take away  
their death-grip on the mobile messaging market.  I'm of the opinion  
that there is some sort of collusion happening, but I'm so far away  
from that these days it doesn't bother me other than to laugh at how  
backwards our mobile carrier market is here.

So when I _did_ care about these things, I spent some time researching  
it.  After a lot of painful phone calls asking obvious questions of  
carriers ("You want WHAT?! IMPOSSIBLE!") the only thing I found was  
this: Level 3 offers SIP-delivered numbers (origination and  
termination) which can be SMS-enabled.  The SMS-enabling requires a  
separate deal with a company called "Syniverse".  But once you get  
both of those deals in place, you could send/receive messages to  
numbers which were delivered to you via VoIP trunks.  The SMS delivery  
had various different protocols options over which it could be  
delivered/accepted from your location.

This was 1.5 years ago that I did the research on this, so perhaps  
vendors other than Level 3 are offering this now in the United  
States.  I hope so.  But it was new, cutting-edge crazy stuff back  
then, despite being COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that the market needs something  
like this, and that every ITSP would offer it immediately.  As far as  
SMS-enabling existing E.164 addresses that you might have - good  
luck.  If someone knows of a way, let me know since I figure it'll be  
a cold day in hell before my carrier(s) would offer that service  
capability.

Asterisk isn't the greatest platform yet for accepting text messages,  
and it's only marginally good at sending them on some types of digital  
circuits.  SIP SIMPLE or SMPP are really the primary protocols for  
this type of transmission, and Asterisk doesn't have either yet.  It's  
a chicken-and-egg thing, I think - as soon as better SMS transmit/ 
receive is possible, better text message handling will appear in  
Asterisk (your code is welcome!)

Lastly: there is some activity towards SMS support in some unusual  
configurations from the OpenBTS guys who are building interesting base  
station stuff.  If you have an interest in getting Asterisk to  
function as a GSM base station (with radio!) then check it out.


References:

http://www.level3.com/
http://www.syniverse.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_peer-to-peer_protocol
http://www.csoft.co.uk/sms/api/smpp_to_sms.htm
http://openbts.sourceforge.net/

JT

---
John Todd
jtodd at digium.com        +1-256-428-6083
Asterisk Open Source Community Director