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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

So here's the problem as I see it. It's very easy to send SMS via email because most carriers provide an email gateway for their SMS services. However, people use SMS by phone number. The use-by-number paradigm is one that is hard to break, because that is the one thing the carriers won't open up. SMS is tucked into a small portion of the cell signal, which is why the character limit is around 180 characters.

It's easy to write a 3rd party solution for smart phones, say like an IM or twitter client. But how do you open access to the hundreds of millions of people with regular phones. I think if someone can figure that out, you have a business model

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There is an application called ChompSMS for the Android platform that is as close to what you are talking about as I have seen. They provide a more iPhone-like interface to text messages and optionally send SMS messages (for a fee) though their own network. That is to say, using data to send the message to their servers and eventually out into the cellular network again to the destination.

The idea is that in some circumstances, such as sending a text message internationally, their service is cheaper than sending the SMS directly.

[Edit: here is the url: http://www.chompsms.com/ ]

I am thinking about writing an app centered around SMS messages. I'm leaning towards sending out the text messages via the provided carrier email gateways (since it's free). I mainly concentrated on US based cell customers.

Will the carrier bock my domain if I start sending 5,000 emails to subscribed cell customers on their network?

Do you have any real-world experience with sending large number of text messages via the various carrier email gateways? What are some of the gotchas?

I think you might run into breach of the guidelines of the mobile marketing association. All messages application to mobile should be sent from a short code, to make it easy to opt-out. See http://www.mmaglobal.com/policies/code-of-conduct

You betcha they'll start blocking you. There are plenty of services that offer a legit API interface to SMS though. You'll get a faster response time anyway.

Some carriers open the ability to send an email to phonenumber@carrierNetwork. The trick is that it's difficult to tell which network a stranger has come from if you don't use the existing infrastructure that operators have developed (carrier-specific SMS gateways and inter-carrier SMS gateways).

Carriers have a very effective lock, but the OP is right -- this is something that is ripe for new solutions as smart-phones become more ubiquitous. This doesn't address the issue for millions of other subscribers that can only use phones (mostly Nokia) that can never have 3rd party apps installed.

I think a transition model can be envisaged where the smartphone client or mobile website interacts with the legacy SMS system. As more smartphones access the dedicated client (maybe with an open push notification technology) or the mobile website, the mobile messaging platform will slowly substitute the original proprietary SMS model. That's what happened to PayPal which started by piggy-backing on credit cards and now makes money on paypal-to-paypal money transfers.

I hope SMS dies a swift, painful death. I have gmail access on my (non-iphone/android/blackberry/etc) phone. I just wish it had SMS style notification for new messages. Maybe a notification whitelist or something would be nice. How does blackberry handle this?

The Blackberry handles this with their own proprietary, parallel push infrastructure called BEZ (sp?) servers. This is a separate data network that RIM maintains, which has allowed them to be dependent only on the basic radio and IP connectivity that carriers provide.

Bottom-line: RIM takes care of managing the higher-level application logic (i.e. event triggers) and application data, and use wireless carriers as dumb bit pipes. It's an extremely capital intensive, but so far successful model and has remained one of their competitive edges in the wireless market.

BES - Blackberry Enterprise Server (http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/server/) typically for businesses. It requires you have your own Exchange server or similar and someone to set it up for you as it, and has $$$ monthly subscription charges.

Most individual (or very small businesses) would use...

BIS - Blackberry Internet Service (http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/internet/) which is also generally available as a cheap (<$10 p.c.m.) bolt-on by your service provider (atleast in the UK) on most pay-as-you-go/contract phones and requires little or no setup effort.

In oligolopic canada you usually have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of those email to sms gateways. and caller id...

isn't this why twitter is useful?

also, a nokia phone directly (with SIM card) connected to one's computer can give you a sms gateway with a regular phone number (short codes cost on the order of a few thousand US dollars a year)

frontline sms can help a lot, too.

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