6 Jan 2005
For a project I’m working on we need to send text messages to mobile phones. We could buy or rent an SMS gateway, but most carriers in the US allow you to email a message to yourphonenumber@yourcarrier and it will appear as a text message on the phone. For example, my phone is currently with AT&T so you can send a short email to 9166002497 AT mobile.att.net and it will show up on my phone.
The problem is figuring out what carrier the phone number is at so you can append the correct hostname to the email address. John Wehr pointed out Teleflip, a service that lets you send email to yourphonenumber@teleflip.com and have it delivered to the phone, regardless of carrier. That’s dandy, but I don’t want to rely on some free, third party service that might change or go away later.
After spending some time looking for a way to determine the phone’s carrier, it hit me: I don’t really care what carrier they’re using. If I send the message to the incorrect carrier, it won’t get delivered to the wrong person because phone numbers are unique. It will just bounce. So if I wanted to send a message to 212-555-1212, I could just send a text message to 2125551212@mobile.att.net, 2125551212@messaging.sprintpcs.com, 2125551212@messaging.nextel.com and so on. Send to them all and ignore the bounces. Based on the bounces, you could even learn which carrier someone’s using and just send to that one in the future.
It’s not terribly polite to send email that you know is going to bounce, but it’s not a huge load on the servers and you’d only do it once for each new number.
I don’t know who posted this “Stupid cell phone tricks” thing, but dude, GENIUS! It’s so simple!
whats the addy for verizon users?
already thought about this, however, if teleflip can do it there’s gotta b a way.
contact [at] johncaza [dot] com if you have any suggestions!!
John
To text Verizon users, send msg to [10-didgit phone number]@vtext.com.
Message length is limited to 160 characters, including the email address.
Answer comes from Verizon: https://text1.vzw.com/text/jsp/textmessagingfaq.jsp#howdoisendtxtmsgfromemail
To text Verizon users, send msg to [10-didgit phone number]@vtext.com.
Message length is limited to 160 characters, including the email address.
Answer comes from Verizon: https://text1.vzw.com/text/jsp/textmessagingfaq.jsp#howdoisendtxtmsgfromemail
If I may suggest: Have a drop down box with the different carriers that you have known email addresses for… then… once they select it… you already have it because $carriermail = $carrierselect or whatever you call them…
It would cut your server load down a lot
Someone has been sending my fiance dirty videos, pictures, etc. and he won’t tell me who it is. We are going through t-mobile and I can’t figure out how to pull up the text message history. Can you please Help!
I always have to block this guy that beat me badly ,,he went to jail,,and got out ,,we knew all the same people and he manages to get my number always ,,he calls private # ,,and he makes me cry …if I could make him change his number which he never knows what that feels like ,,to pay big money to get rid of someone,,,maybe someone can find a way to make him do this ,,,god bless you if you can ,,I have Chemo treatments am sick and he still knows I am not well and does this ..his number [REDACTED personal info]
It find it ironic that the comment above from “Guy” in Jan 2005 states that teleflip isn’t “going anywhere” but teleflip.com went out of business in 2008.
Is there still not solution to this problem? My Google searches are getting me nowhere fast.
mynumber@mobile.att.net did NOT work. mynumber@txt.att.net did work.
Adam,
I used the same thought process for my app, but it turns out that some ported numbers will end up receiving the message multiple times! For instance, sending to myself results in 3 separate messages!
Also, wtf is up with all the people talking about relationships in the comments?
Does anyone know how to send free text messages to Saudi Telecom (Aljawal) mobile phone customers?
I want to access pic texts that came to me and were lost. My bill shows me the internet address.How Can I look at and save these texts/pics?example 902-000-000@ intersurf.light.net.Can someone tell me how to do this?
What is the addy for Bluegrass Cellular
These are the last 15 comments. Read all 136 comments here.
Adam Kalsey
Mobile: 916.600.2497
Email: adam AT kalsey.com
AIM or Skype: akalsey
©1999-2010 Adam Kalsey.
Content management by Movable Type.
anon
March 3, 2008 10:58 AM
http://fonefinder.net