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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through July 28, 2014 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 8088 Registered: 10-2002 |
From the support mailbox:
Hi, I can’t answer you definitively without knowing exactly how your phones connect to WiFi. To the best of my knowledge, T-Mobile is the only major US mobile operator that supports WiFi calling without adding additional hardware. Some of their Android phones are preloaded with a WiFi calling app. Based upon our tests, when the WiFi calling is active, all NowSMS SMS & MMS activity is occurring over WiFi instead of over the cellular network. Note that the WiFi calling app does not seem to be something that you can add to your Android phone. It is only available if it was preloaded on the phone and the phone was originally purchased from T-Mobile. The other US mobile operators do not have any features that switch built-in phone features (Voice/SMS/MMS) to using WiFi instead of the cellular network. What they do offer is picocells or network extenders, which are hardware devices you can add to your network. For example, AT&T has a device they call the Microcell. It plugs into Ethernet and acts as a mini cell tower, so phones connect to it if it offers the best available signal. We’ve tried it … it works ok for SMS, but the data speeds seem pretty slow for MMS. It works for MMS, however, the data speed for sending/receiving is similar to GPRS/EDGE, which can cause problems when sending/receiving larger messages. Verizon has similar devices that they refer to as network extenders. We have not tested with them, but based on specs, they provide 3G EVDO data connectivity. This is slower that HSPA from AT&T and T-Mobile, so I’d expect performance only slightly better than the AT&T Microcell. With both the AT&T and Verizon solutions, devices can only connect to the picocell if they are registered to do so. Our suggestion would be to run your own tests. That’s why we offer a trial version. T-Mobile WiFi calling doesn’t seem to have a downside, in our tests it seems a little slower than LTE, but it is better than most 3G. For the extenders from the other operators, speed may be more of a consideration. Keep in mind that the Android phone does not need to be tethered to the NowSMS server. NowSMS talks to it over WiFi, so they need to be on the same network (the NowSMS server might be hardwired or it could also be on WiFi). The Android phone needs to be in WiFi range so it can talk to the NowSMS server, but you can physically locate it somewhere that it can get a strong cellular signal. I mention this because performance over Verizon LTE will be many times faster than over the network extender. Again, I should emphasize that the speed and performance issues I mention are focused more on MMS, where larger amounts of data are being transferred. Network speed is not as much of an issue for SMS. -bn Bryce Norwood Now SMS/MMS Support | |||
