| Benefits of this software for MVNOs |  Search
|
|
NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through September 26, 2009 ⬆ |
◄ ► |
| Author | Message | |||
| Pete Kepler New member Username: Petek Post Number: 1 Registered: 07-2009 |
I own two small US CDMA MVNOs. One on Sprint's network, the other on Verizon. On the Sprint side I billed for about 150,000 SMS last month. Much less on the Verizon one. I am curious if your NowSMS gateway could benefit me. I can change the settings of all future handsets that I activate in the field for both companies and somehow run these SMS through me and save money. Currently I pay about $.02 per SMS wholesale on the Sprint side and a whooping $.06 on the Verizon. I took about an hour of reading through the latest manual for the NOWSMS product and do see I need either a GSM modem or a provider. Could I use a bank of GSM modems for the outbound SMS from my customers? I can buy retail plans from T-Mobile that can get the cost per message down below $.02. I also have access to a SMS OUTBOUND ONLY gateway for free. If I could do either of these is there a way via API to rapidly send the accounting records to my billing platform? Thanks, Pete | |||
| ashot shahbazian New member Username: Animatele Post Number: 21 Registered: 06-2004 |
Hi Pete, You need to first pull the messages from the host nets and only then deliver them to recipients. In order to pull the messages you would first need to host operator agree to transfer them to you from your subscribers. Second thing you would need is either an SMSC or a supplier that can accept your messages via SS7 (or you set up an SS7-to-SMPP convertor.) Then your messages can be handled by yourself at your SMSC (a modem bank won't do) or at your supplier's SMSC. NowSMS can be helpful if your host operators are capable and willing to transfer the SMS to you via SMPP, but it's unlikely that they will for free. There is a company in the U.S. somewhere in New England that used to make really inexpensive SMSC-s just for your purpose. I don't remember the name, perhaps Bryce might recall. Kind regards, Ashot | |||
| Pete Kepler New member Username: Petek Post Number: 2 Registered: 07-2009 |
I'm sure my providers won't transfer them to me. But I can get into the programming of every phone I activate. Can't I just tell the phones where to forward the SMS? | |||
| ashot shahbazian New member Username: Animatele Post Number: 22 Registered: 06-2004 |
Nope, it'd not work. It may have been tricky but still possible for a GSM network, but CDMA signaling travels pretty much within the private network of the host MNO. If they don't allow it you won't fetch your messages, in all probability. Try asking them anyway. A lot of larger MVNO-s handle their own SMS, this won't surprise them. Say that you're setting up your own SMSC and want them to forward the subscriber MO-s to your SMSC instead of their SMSC-s. Kind regards, Ashot | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 7831 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Pete, I think the company that Ashot is thinking of is The Hyde Company. They are based in Georgia (the US state, not the country). I don't know if they work with any MVNOs, but we've encountered them a couple of times in use at mobile operators on island nations. A few years back, they added WDP Adaptation support for CDMA networks so that our MMSC could be deployed for a mutual customer. (MMS is trickier to deploy on CDMA networks than on GSM networks.) spatch.com is their web site. -bn | |||
| Pete Kepler New member Username: Petek Post Number: 3 Registered: 07-2009 |
Okay so let' say I can't get my carrier to route SMS to me. And I can't change anything in the handsets to allow the SMS to be sent to me. I can set the handsets to send MMS to my server and save some money there at least right? Pete | |||
| ashot shahbazian New member Username: Animatele Post Number: 26 Registered: 06-2004 |
That may or may not be possible, and if it is NowSMS might be very useful. In fact if you can manage getting the MMS in NowSMS you might use GPRS/EDGE/3G modems with U.S. GSM simcards with cheap or even unlimited messaging to do it at fixed monthly. I'm not an expert in MMS, but I'm sure Bryce and Des can explain. Note that if you need the recipinets replying in modem sending scenario, you would need to use a so-called "SAT Server" as the replies would arrive on a number different from that of your subscriber. SAT is a cumbersome thing to configure and run, and that's where we can probably help. Try testing if you can fetch the MMS into NoSMS first. Kind regards, Ashot | |||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 1032 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Pete, That should be possible. The challenge part will be sending MMS messages from your users to the other operators (and the operator that hosts your MVNO). If you do it with modems, the sender address is going to be that of the modem instead of that of your subscriber. And it is likely that other MMS providers are going to restrict you to sending from a short code instead of putting your actual subscriber's phone number in as the sender. You might be able to work with Verisign. We have a number of regional US mobile operators that are customers, and they all seem to use Verisign as their MMS interconnect with the other operators. The only open question is whether or not they would let you connect via MM4 as an operator. Alternatively, your "MMS support" could be true MMS only to your customers. For external MMS delivery, it could be converted to SMS with a web link. (We make it so the web link can be viewed either from a phone browser or a PC browser.) There's still one problem though. A handset only lets you configure one active MMSC setting. I'm assuming that your scenario would be that received MMS messages would still go through your host operator ... but sent messages would go through an alternative path. The problem is that when the host operator delivers the MMS message to the handset, the handset posts an acknowledgment back to the configured MMSC address. If the host operator MMSC doesn't receive this acknowledgment, it may try to re-deliver the message ... and after so many attempts, it may disable MMS for the device. Theoretically you could use your own WAP proxy, and have the WAP proxy forward to different MMSCs based upon the packet type and/or message-id format. (That's not a function that we implement in our WAP proxy, but it's technically not very difficult.) However, the problem with the WAP proxy is that the acknowledgment from the phone to the host operator MMSC is now going to appear to the host operator MMSC as originated from the WAP proxy. This may result in the request being blocked by a firewall or rejected by the MMSC as being unauthenticated. In many cases, the MMSC addresses are in private IP address ranges, and your proxy wouldn't be able to connect to the MMSC, so it couldn't perform this redirection. All in all, I fear it's going to be hard to do much without some form of cooperation from the host operator. -- Des NowSMS Support | |||
