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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through April 10, 2005 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Jerome Davis New member Username: Jay1davis Post Number: 1 Registered: 02-2005 |
Is there a way to find out what carrier a sender is textin from. I am in the US. I have 2 way setup to send back a link to a phone. It works fine for Sprint phones but when I try verizon it does not work. I was wondering if there was some kind of code that comes in that lets me know who the carrier is and if so either send a wap push (which does not work on sprint phone atleast not mine)to phones that can receive them or a plain sms with the link (does work with sprint phones). Are my settings not correct for wap push if it does not work with sprint or is that a cdma issue. Thanks in advance. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4032 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Jerome, There's no easy way to do this. There is no code that comes in telling you which provider the sender was subscribed to. The only way to get this information is basically to subscribe to a service that allows you to do lookups to make this determination. You would do this lookup after receiving the message, as part of deciding what action to take. (There are some tables that you can download from www.nanpa.com which will tell you which providers have been assigned which prefixes in the US ... but that doesn't cover numbers that have been moved with number portability.) WAP Push to CDMA phones is considerably more difficult than GSM because of a lack of binary interconnections into the SMSCs of CDMA operators. If CDMA subscribers are a big portion of your audience, I'd go with sending a plain SMS that includes a link. -bn | |||
| Jerome Davis New member Username: Jay1davis Post Number: 2 Registered: 02-2005 |
Thanks for your quick response. That's the problem - I can send to CDMA as a sms text but its when I send to GSM carriers that I run into problems because I can only send sms text because of the CDMA factor. Is there any kind of work around besides going through a SMSC. I've tried looking at the nanpa tables but they are not very accurate even when looking at my friends numbers and their carriers, a lot of them were off and some carriers were undistinguishable. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanks | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4038 Registered: 10-2002 |
What a lot of people do is use one format for country code 1, and the GSM format for the rest of the world. It's not perfect, but ... In my spare time (which has been quite limited), I've been trying to find efficient (and cost-effective) services for phone number lookup. I'm meeting with one such service that looks like it might be promising next week at the 3GSM conference. But I don't know pricing plans for this particular provider, so I don't yet know how practical it will be. If you're curious, this type of lookup is generally referred to as an HLR (home location register) lookup. (And one of the questions that I will need to ask is whether or not this will also work for CDMA operator lookups.) The only other alternative is to ask people their provider when subscribing to your service, when that is an option. -bn | |||
| Sean Maurik Unregistered guest |
Hi Bryce, I hope you had a good time at 3GSM. I'm in a similair boat where we need to identify a carrier (in order to hit the right carriers gateways) given just a phone number. I've found several services that provide access to that info based on the old static number system (HLR related) but really nothing that works with portable numbers (LNP stuff?). Have you seen anything that might support doing such a lookup that takes into account number portability? Thanks Sean | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4091 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Sean, I'm not optimistic about the CDMA issue ... we'll have to do some tests. But as far as GSM goes, let's just say that I've heard some claims that I need to verify. I need to do some testing before I feel comfortable enough to post any details. -bn | |||
| Alex Trabeck Unregistered guest |
I just ran into the same problem, the best way to do it, is dial the Area Code and Three digit number, plus four random numbers until you get a message like, "Verizon Wireless, you have just reached a number that is no longer in service" That worked fine for me... -A | |||
