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SMS Messaging Unreliable

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-lot-of-misses dept.

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?"

8 of 544 comments (clear)

  1. Sure, but you're told by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is true for the UK sure, but if it fails you get a message back - always.

    --
    D
    "CSLib Menace strikes back"

  2. SMSC by PauloSousa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know what kind of Short Messaging Service Center they have, but I live in portugal where all the telecoms have CMG SMSC's and I I have never seen 1 message lost!

    And i use a SMS chat system where I receive around 100 messages per day...

  3. You know, maybe someone just caught on. by twofidyKidd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The telco might be dropping out a message here and there to make a few extra bucks on messages.

    Here's the math. If 7.5% of 26,000 messages don't make it through, that what..1950 messages that MAY get repeated. So at $0.10 per message and at a resend rate of 20% (390 resent messages) They make an extra $40.
    Double the amount of messages and increase the failure rate to 10% and a constant resend rate of 20%, thats $104.
    So if a telco runs an SMS service that does some 150,000 messages a day and drops out, maybe 12% of them betting on a %20 resend rate...thats adds up over time.

    --


    Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
  4. Verizon won an anti-spam lawsuit by Adam9 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Quick paste:

    Verizon Wireless emerged the victor from what could be one of the country's first cases of wireless spamming.

    The country's largest wireless carrier, based in Bedminster, N.J., said it had reached a settlement with Acacia National Mortgage, which calls for the lender to stop sending repeated, unsolicited commercial text messages to Verizon Wireless customers.

    Other terms of the settlement were not disclosed, including any possible remuneration for message recipients, who under some plans are charged a per-message fee. Under the Colorado state antispam law on which Verizon based its case, recipients or carriers can sue for $10 per message, plus any actual damages.

    Full article is here

    I love Verizon Wireless.

  5. Re:Failure Rate by Yurian · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I can only speak from personal experience, but I think the failure rate must be far less. I live in Ireland half the year, and spend the other half in the UK. I get delivery reports from the network that tells me whether a message has been delivered, delayed, etc. They've only very occasionally failed - and then it's usually during major network congestion, like at a rock concert, or on new years eve, etc.

    I don't know how popular it is in the US, but text messaging is big over here. People chat by text message about all sorts of things too trivial to ring someone about, plus you can text someone from situations where you couldn't call - such as during a class, etc. The networks operators love it - at $0.10 per message on most pre-paid service, it generates tons of cash or very little network traffic. It was the big surprise money generator when they launched GSM.

  6. Re:Time limit by Guido69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    " 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."

    YES!! (Damn mod points - never there when you need them)

    A year+ ago I was trying to set up system-automated cell text messaging from Peregrine ServiceCenter to the Verizon phones carried by our sysadmins. Would only work about 50% of the time, so we scrapped the idea and reverted back to the Hell^Hp Desk calling admins.

    Long story short, I went through 3 levels of support at Verizon to figure out that this was the problem only to subsequently find out there was no way for us the change the expiration through their service. Wonder if that's been fixed yet?

    --
    - If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
  7. No problems in New Zealand by Audent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Vodafone's GSM network always tells me when a message can't be delivered (wrong number entered on my part usually - not a cellphone) and I don't think I've ever had someone (reliably)say "Oh I didn't get that text message"... plenty of no-hopers that can't actually use their phones claiming not to get messages (I usually find them and show them how to use their SMS or predictive texting at that point).
    Telecom NZ uses CDMA an D-AMPS and I haven't heard of any losses on that side at all.

    --
    I am a leaf on the wind
  8. How about delayed? by barzok · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Having not used SMS, I don't know if this is the same thing. We use the text messaging features of our phone/pagers at work all the time for automated systems to alert us to system problems. We've had days where things come in very late, sometimes by many hours.

    Unfortunately, we never negotiated an SLA with Verizon, so if their system has problems oh well, too bad.

    IMHO, late messages are as bad as ones that never get delivered. How about numbers on that?