Slashdot Mirror
SMS Messaging Unreliable
Lovejoy writes "From a Reuters story: Keynote announced today that in its two-week, 26,000 message test-period 7.5% of its text messages never reached their destinations Ouch. I don't have SMS - Is this report consistent with your experience?"
Works here (in Finland) well enough. I'd say 99% of my messages reach their destination.
SMS messages can be set to "expire" if the are not delivered in a certain amount of time. All the phones I've owned had this set to "now or never", so if the message couldn't be delivered at the moment it got trashed. Mos users, of course, have no idea this setting exists.
The handset gets a received receipt via the network when a) the message is waiting to be received by the other handset and b) the message is delivered successfully. If your handset doesn't get the first receipt back immediately, the network received receipt, it gives you an error. You can frob a bit on most Nokias to show you all this, it's really handy.
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
I have a t68 world and a t28 world. the t68 is for my cingular wireless here in the states. Every third sms croaks with this service, while my Slovenia phone co, Mobitel, can get every sms to me when I cut on my t28 in the States, or anywhere for that matter. I think it really has to do with the provider and the importance that they put on sms. Cingular charges 3 bucks for 100 sms's a month, while Mobitel charges nothing and only 1 tolar a minute for phone calls within SLO and 55 tolars a minute for international roaming for my Cingular phone. Cingular charges 400 tolars a minute (2 bucks, roughly) for a minute to my Mobitel phone. US GSM and mobile phone plans in general are a ripoff. How can Slovenia, while pretty prosperous for a former Yugoslav republic, keep rates so cheap? It can just be 90 percent market penetration alone!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I'm seeing a lot of "Why the hell would someone use a cell phone to message when they can just talk?!?"
Well, besides the giggle factor that comes into play the first time you message a friend who's staring at you from right across the room, my answer would be because IT QUIET!!!
In the movie theater and your mom/boss/significant other wants to know where you are, or why the hell you aren't someplace you're supposed to be? Your phone on vibrate can show you who's calling you, and you can quickly type in a message and reply back with information without disturbing those around you.
On New Years Eve, I was at a Rave at the LA Sports Arena. Do you think I'll really be able to hear or talk to anybody next to a wall of subs blowing out my ear drums? Considering there were quite a few people there, I also get separated from my friends. Where's my buddies? When do I know when it's time to go? How far is Kenny getting with that Bree chick (seriously!)? There would be no way we could talk on our phones, but we were still able to communicate with our SMS text messages.
Now granted, SMS isn't nessecary, but then again, this is Slashdot. How often do we do things that are truely nessecary?
-Kefabi