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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through September 15, 2006 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Hitesh Sawlani New member Username: Hitkaiser Post Number: 1 Registered: 07-2006 |
Hello, I am quite new to all this, but if I can get this working, my company will most likely go with it. We are based in the UK. What we need is to send MMS messages through the internet... ie. send an email with an attachment and have it sent out as MMSs to mobile phone users. I was wondering if you could help me in finding out what options are available in terms of SMSC for UK users. Since we are going to possibly cater a large number of users it would have to be a method that is relatively fast (hence, sending one by one on from a phone isnt viable) Thank you. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 6190 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Hitesh, I wish things weren't so complicated. What you want to do makes perfect sense, but there are some deployment considerations that get in the way. Let me try to explain some of these considerations. The underlying consideration for the question that you are asking is that you're looking for an SMSC to deliver MMS messages. Getting an SMSC connection with an aggregator is relatively easy. (I say relatively easy, because a lot of it depends on your message volumes. I'm guessing that you work for a company and you're looking at an internal deployment for your workforce, so I might be wrong. What seems like a large number of potential messages to you might not seem so large to an SMS provider. Margins are so slim on the actual SMS delivery process that many providers pay little attention except to potential customers who will be sending extremely large volumes of messages. But there are a variety of companies that we could point you to. I'd suggest giving our UK office a call and they can give you some pointers.) But the more difficult techical issue is that you want to send MMS messages, and that is a bit more involved than just SMS. See http://www.nowsms.com/howmmsworks.htm for an explanation of how MMS works. Basically, the underlying technology of MMS delivery uses a combination of SMS and WAP. But the MMS settings that are preconfigured by most mobile operators will only allow MMS download from that operator's MMSC. In the UK, you can deliver to Vodafone and O2 ok (although you may have to register your site as a content provider and certify to the operators that you are not delivering adult content). But Orange is a problem if you are going the direct MMS route. (If the phones are all used for corporate purposes, you could reconfigure phone settings to get around these issues, but that becomes more complex of a system management issue.) You're better off with an MMSC connection, where you can route the MMS messages through the mobile operators. But these MMSC connections are very hard to come by. The operators aren't interested in selling them ... and unlike SMS, the pricing/margins for MMS is not attractive to the independent providers. We have customers in the UK with various connections to operator MMSCs ... but what we have seen is that the commercial arrangements are extremely complex. That's why the lowly GPRS modem is often still the route of choice. Or even though we still refer to it in terminology as a "GPRS modem" ... a "3G modem" is a much better choice, because you can post the MMS messages more quickly. But whether or not a 3G modem will meet your needs really depends on the volume. If you're doing mass broadcasts to a large number of users, it is not going to work. But for e-mail, it's workable, depending on volume. And for additional capacity, you can add additional modems. -bn | |||
