GSM Character Encoding Problem

GSM Character Encoding Problem SearchSearch
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Paul Darata
New member
Username: Pdarata

Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Friday, October 15, 2010 - 07:02 pm:   

I am trying to send a message that includes a '%' (percent) and '$' (dollar sign) character. I tried sending both without escaping but they both show up as upside down question marks. I then tried using the GSM encoding of %00 for the '@' and %02 for the '$' character. Unfortunately, the message gets truncated at the first %00 and the %02 shows as '2'.

Any idea how to successfully encode these characters?

I am testing with my Blackberry Curve and can successfully send/receive these characters using other methods.

We are running version v2008.6.3.

Thanks.
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 2573
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Friday, October 15, 2010 - 07:41 pm:   

Hi Paul,

For testing character set issues, always use the NowSMS web interface. Do not escape these characters.

I suggest using the NowSMS web interface, as this can help in determining where the problem is (encoding issue client submitting to NowSMS, or encoding issue between NowSMS and SMSC).

For encoding issues between NowSMS and an SMSC, I can't give much advice without knowing what SMSC interface you are using.

I'm going to guess that you're using an SMPP connection, where a common encoding issue is that some SMSCs use the GSM character set, and others use iso-8859-1 US-ASCII. NowSMS defaults to using the SMPP character set. There is a configuration setting under "Advanced Settings" to change the character set to iso-8859-1.

There's some more info here, which talks about client to NowSMS encoding issues as well.

http://blog.nowsms.com/2007/06/long-sms-text-messages-and-160.html

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Des
NowSMS Support