Re: [SAGE] SMS gateway services

["Derek J. Balling" <dredd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 8, 2008, at 6:20 AM, Kaj Niemi wrote:
> Have you considered using a Siemens MC35i or TC35i terminal?  
> Basically you insert a SIM card, connect the terminal to a serial  
> port and talk AT commands with it to both send and receive messages.  
> It's not as easy as using a email-sms gateway service or XML but  
> once you get it working it will work forever.

We used one of those at $JOB[-1] for our out-of-band alerting of  
system issues. The biggest problem, in the US, is convincing a carrier  
to let you use it, and not turning it off every couple months.

Because it's not a device you buy "from the carrier", and it's  
unlocked, etc., etc., we were *constantly* fighting with Cingular/ATTW  
who, it would seem, would keep randomly turning its account off.  
(Which, of course, you'll only ever realize when you notice that  
you've stopped getting SMS alerts... if you don't have a lot of  
problems regularly, that might take some time to notice).

And then, at least with the Special Circle of Hell known as ATTW  
customer care, it was always a nightmare to get them to reactivate the  
account.

I'm not sure what their reasoning ever was... it always simply  
manifested as "cannot register with network" more or less. I'm not  
sure if it was because it consistently had *0* minutes of airtime  
usage, and a very low number of SMS message. Or if it was because it  
would never register as any sort of device they were familiar with and  
so assumed it must be evil (even after we explained time and again  
what it was and what it did).

So, .US folks should be aware of the potential hell they might be in  
for if they use one. Especially since the number of GSM carriers in  
the US is limited greatly (one carrier with crappy network [TMO], and  
one carrier with crappy customer service [ATTW])

Fun. :-P

Cheers,
D