Hacker News Reader

> unreliable

Really? It's the only messaging format that works without a data connection and is an absolute godsend when I'm out camping, rural biking, or at large sporting events and the towers are absolutely swamped.

I'm in a situation at least once a month where the only reliable communication method is SMS.

Wow - infrastructure varies. Here in Eastern Oregon the pattern is pretty reliably that data and signal drop out at the same time, at least on Verizon which is the carrier with the best coverage.

I really thought the pattern that you describe, which I've seen plenty of in the past, had just died out over time and tower upgrades.

I routinely see SMSs fail to deliver, deliver multiple times, deliver weirdly out of order, or deliver at random times, hours or days after they were sent. And this is in a relatively well-served area fifty miles out of Boston.

I still have the issue where MMS seems to just sometimes not work for days or even weeks on end, then suddenly start working again. No OS updates and no APN settings changes in the meantime. Normally it's not an issue, since I don't really use SMS all that much anymore, but my mother and I tend to send pictures back and forth a lot and she still uses SMS.

SMS itself usually works fine, but MMS is particularly bad.

It all depends if there's a 2G network to fall back on if 3G+ data goes down. Most places have shut down their 2G.

>Most places have shut down their 2G.

Citation? I haven't seen this to be the case in California - at least on Verizon.

There was a big story about it when ATT shut down their 2G network in SF since MUNI used that to report their locations.

http://sfist.com/2017/01/06/nextmuni_glitch_problem.php

Only AT&T shut down 2G. T-Mobile reiterated recently that their 2G network will probably be shut down after their 3G one, since it hardly uses any spectrum.

With places that have shutdown 2G, there is no "voice only" network anymore since 3G is required for the voice traffic.

T-Mobile and AT&T have very different planning. AT&T shut down their 2G because it mostly ran on 850mhz and this was needed for LTE and their legacy band 5 WCDMA (hspa) network.

T-Mobile mostly ran its 2G on 1900mhz, but had beefy midband spectrum holdings there and in AWS (and AWS-3) for most markets. Since you can run GSM down in like 200khz or so it's not a huge deal to have a small slice allocated to legacy voice fallback. You can't do that with 3G... you can thin it down but it's still going to need 3.8mhz or so. (T-Mobile has experience thinning HSPA down prior to the MetroPCS CDMA shutdown... which they had legacy CDMA running in guard bands)

Verizon and Sprint used to mostly be on CDMA-based technology. So their 3G 'EVDO' can't do calls.. it needs cdma2k layer to go back to, or full voLTE support. VZW has its shit together on voLTE, sprint will probably never launch volte at this rate.

Sorry was thinking up in Canada only Rogers maintains 2G still.

Same with Eastern WA and CA, you basically just drop behind a big hill/mountain or into a valley and lose all service. I still sometimes use texts since I can turn off data to save power and still send SMS.

Unreliable in the sense, that it is on the discretion of the network, whether it will drop your message somewhere in transit, without letting you know. Just like UDP.

SMS supports delivery notifications, I think I've been using them for almost, if not 20 years

I get a little display under the message saying 'delivered' in the standard android SMS app

That's another message that may or may not be lost, if it is checked at all.

I've got my lesson about SMS reliability few years ago: I've bought a bus ticket via SMS, it was never delivered, but I got charged for it and the operator claimed that it was sent, when disputed. Except I've never received it, and couldn't ride the bus without it.

> That's another message that may or may not be lost, if it is checked at all.

that's a general problem with acknowledgements and is not specific to SMS

TCP is exactly the same

But tcp detects this and recovers or explicitly kills the connection.

Sometimes carriers will send a "delivered" even though it only made it as far as a cell tower (and not an actual phone)

Is it a practical issue where you are? In France I can't remember the last time I've had issues with undelivered text messages and I use them quite a lot (I generally use the cheapest plan I can find which usually doesn't contain data, so I default to texts).

For important messages I'll expect an explicit confirmation anyway, it's not enough that the message reaches the recipient's phone, they also have to read it!

My main problem with texts is lack of privacy which is why I'm slowly pivoting towards Signal instead.

If you've had a long running group chat over MMS, ask to see everyone else's phones. Messages will be in a different order on every phone and there will be many missing messages.

My wife and I do this regularly because we won't understand something said and we'll see one of us didn't get a message from the group.

It's 2018 and I learn that there's MMS group chat o_O

-- a guy who used SMS and then had 90% of friends being reachable via IRC and email, and SMS for the rest - before entering the world of smartphones.

SMS is a best-effort protocol; that is inherently unreliable.

Business class SMS is quite reliable.

Dropped SMS messages, particularly between Android and and iPhones, have caused some catastrophes at my work. I no longer trust them enough to use them to communicate with staff.

Isn't that usually because iMessage doesn't actually send SMS if it thinks it can send something else?

> Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms at all. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand.

But it's universal. I would never buy a phone that doesn't support sms. How do I contact people with flip phones? People with iPhones?

Also, Gchat is "monitored" as much as sms. Imessage claims it's not, but has that/can that be verified?

Its both universal _and_ relies on the voice network rather than the data network (if the device even has one). SMS is a fundamental part of the GSM spec, has been for over 30 years, and is one of those super lightweight battle-tested technologies that there are certainly some pretty great IP-based alternatives to, but which replacing wholesale for some yet-another-IP-based-rebranded-messanger seems crazy. The beauty of SMS riding on the voice network is that it gives you redundancy. Phone doesn't have a data signal, but can get voice? SMS still works.

Until we live in a world where GSM and friends are dead and everything everywhere is VoLTE, SMS still has a place as a fallback.

I'm always a little surprised to come into HN comment threads about SMS and see so many people rallying for its replacement, yet we go into a thread about Slack and see many of the same arguments being made to defend IRC, etc.

IRC is more modern in a sense. It usually works over an IP network.

iMessage is end-to-end encryption.

How do you know that? Have you seen sources and verified that those sources are actually compiled and shipped with the final product?

Unless you write your own compiler, look at every line of the source by hand well enough to ensure there no "underhanded C code contest" backdoors, compile the application yourself, load it onto your phone, and do the same for your friends and share keys with them in person, you don't have this kind of assurance for any communication app.

You have to draw a line somewhere and accept some level of trust proportionate to your threat model. iMessage is good enough for most people who aren't Edward Snowden.

That’s a good point. Apple attests that it’s end to end and people have tried to track and fail and leaks don’t reveal vulnerabilities.

By comparison, no other majors attest that (eg, Google explicitly says it’s not end to end) and leaks have shown data accessed in clear text by government actors.

Look. Its simple.

Signal work on Android just like iMessage - you set it as SMS app, and it uses Signal messages with people who have Signal (even on iPhone) and SMS otherwise.

We already have iMessage-style app on Android. It's just that pretty much nobody is using it.

Because no carrier installs Signal as the default messaging app.

> The carriers are idiots.

For decades, ISPs/cell networks' biggest fear is becoming "dumb pipes". But they all seem to land there eventually.

Yes.... lack of vision is what seems to define an ISP. Creating content, while 'sexy', is fleeting and incredibly expensive. Delivering the content reliably and quickly is a predictable busy model. ISPs should be clamoring to advertise how they deliver Netflix the fastest, or offer equivalent to Cloudflare's service but for their customers. Instead, we get an XFINITY VOICE REMOTE O.M.G. and a platform thats update once every 5 years.

This is caricature, but based in reality: https://xkcd.com/1810/ - SMS, like email, is ubiquitous. Unlike email, it doesn't even require a data connection, just a cellphone signal. (Yes, this is a thing, even in supposedly civilized countries) Unlike email, it doesn't even require a feature phone - even the dumbest of the featurephones can read SMS, from the venerable Nokia 3210 up (yes, even e-mail can be too complex for Grandma).

And the other thing - asking Google to stick to a messaging API? Google, which has launched-and-killed more mutually incompatible messaging platforms than I've even managed to use? Not gonna happen. "Use Talk! Use Hangouts! Use Allo! Use TwoCansAndAString!"

The point is not to kill SMS, just to make the default an IP-based protocol, that's not tied to the carrier/operator.

Currently people are dependent on phone numbers for too many things. (Too many "2FA" uses SMS.)

Agreed, SMS needs to stop being supported by handset vendors so people stops relying on it as the universal text platform.

When a communication system silently drops messages, this is unacceptable. But people are ok with it because they're accustomed to it being shit. The sender wonders why you never responded, and you are unaware they contacted you. Or the sender asks if you want to meet for lunch, and you get it 8 hours later. Group messages? I've compared phones on a table and we all have a different context to the conversation because each phone has different set of missing messages.

The messaging platforms are in silos and it sucks, everyone is annoyed about having 3-4 chat apps. But at least they work reliably, and that's the better alternative to garbage SMS.

SMS is important. It's universal, and it can be used as a way to communicate with anyone. I have friends that I chat with exclusively over SMS. They use Facebook Messenger, and I won't use Facebook anymore. They could join me on Signal or something, but I'm not going to ask them to download a whole app just to chat with me.

It's the one messaging platform that's not in a silo, and that's just as important (maybe more so?) than 100% reliability.

> When a communication system silently drops messages, this is unacceptable. But people are ok with it because they're accustomed to it being shit.

Or they are OK with it because they have never had their SMS messages dropped, like me (that I know of).

At least here (Finland) SMS is used for a lot of stuff like bank transfer verification and postal package pickup notifications, having many dropped messages would seemingly make it unsuitable for those purposes.

Of course, MMS is a completely different story and I've seen issues left and right on various phones and carriers. I don't think anybody really even uses MMS group chats here.

> Remember When AT&T sent a paper copy of every image you downloaded on your iPhone in a bill?

No, no I don't - that has to be apocryphal.

From another comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill

>Remember When AT&T sent a paper copy of every image you downloaded on your iPhone in a bill?

I'd never heard of that, fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill