On 2022-01-17 at 16:58:06 UTC-0500 (Tue, 18 Jan 2022 08:58:06 +1100
(EST))
Dave Horsfall <d...@horsfall.org>
is rumored to have said:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, Richard L. Hamilton wrote:
Every cell phone provider, or at least just about every US cell phone
provider, has an email to SMS gateway. It's free for someone sending
email to it, not necessarily for the recipient. The problem is you
have
to know the provider for a given number, and AFAIK, there's no
particularly easy way to do that automatically and scriptably (so you
can generate an email address for the correct gateway). MMS gateways
also exist, although the acceptable MIME types and size/complexity
limits for attachments may be tedious to discover.
I've seen a reference to his before; the receiver pays to receive
mobile
calls in the USA?
That has not been the case for most people for many years. Way back
(~2k) some service providers tried to put tolls on SMS and it is still
legal, but I don't think any major provider still charges to receive
text messages.
In Australia it's the sender who pays (of course).
Most US providers have stopped charging at all for SMS for most
customers.
And I believe that mobile phones (what you call cellular phones) don't
have their own prefix?
Right. It's all country code 1 and the "NANP" system of area codes and
local exchanges (leading 3 digits of 7.) Many mobile numbers are in
exchanges first allocated to mobile providers, e.g. my number and all
others in my area code with the same exchange prefix were first assigned
to Sprint customers, but after 20y of churn via number portability has
broken that pattern. It also is somewhat true that area codes (which no
longer are geographically exclusive) which have the 'traditional' 0 or 1
as the 2nd digit have the bulk of "landlines" and the newest area codes
that overlay multiple legacy area codes mostly have mobiles, but that's
just timing.
We reserve "04" for that; at one time you could
even tell which provider it was, but now you get to keep your number
when
you change providers.
We never did that in the US because of the random walk under corporate
influence of our telecom & antitrust policy of the past 5 decades. I'd
bet that if AT&T had been allowed into mobile service pre-breakup, we'd
probably have a special prefix or segregated area codes for mobile
numbers.
But to bring this back on topic...
Alternatives: a service (some free for small volumes only) that can
send
SMS from a computer. Or Asterisk plus extensions, to set yourself
up a
full VoIP PBX...except that will need some paid service too, to
connect
to. But it will do a lot more than just send (or receive) SMS, it
could
forward phone calls, with proper hardware interfaces drive either old
fashioned or VoiP phones, etc. It looks like a lot of work and
learning
as well as expense, though, and really ought to have a dedicated
server,
too, although that's not absolutely necessary.
We had that in a previous $JOB; if Nagios (a general system monitor)
detected something that triggered a rule then a set of users would
receive
a brief SMS, sent from a GSM modem. I looked at this for my own LAN,
but
it ain't cheap...
One can do similar in the US: get a number from a mobile provider and
put a SMS-capable CDMA or GSM modem on it. I've seen this done in
multiple places, but all with bespoke custom drivers so I don't have any
suggestions for the OP...
--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire
