[asterisk-users] Dongle or extra channel and sip SMS

[Chris Bagnall]

On 15/7/13 3:00 am, bilal ghayyad wrote:
> I need to be able to send SMS messages for campaign or for specific users, also I need to be able to receive SMS messages and do automatic reply.

In my experience, SMS is something best done out of Asterisk. That's not 
to say that Asterisk can't do it, of course, just that there are 
providers out there who can give you a nice friendly API for easy 
integration into your application. This is especially true if you need 
to send *lots* of messages in a short space of time: simply adding a 
single mobile device with a single SIM isn't going to cut it - you're 
going to need a bunch of them, at least. All of those will likely have 
different numbers, so you're going to have to handle that for receiving 
messages. Then you have to consider that some networks will charge more 
to send messages to numbers on the same network vs. a different network, 
so you might have to separate out your numbers into networks (easy if 
they've never been ported; more tricky if they have).

Based on past projects (in the UK), the cost of multiple SIM contracts, 
the necessary hardware to connect them, development time, etc., is 
usually more than the cost of paying a third party with a suitable API 
<x> per message to deliver them on your behalf.

Kind regards,

Chris
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