Alex, We've had an excellent experience developing SMS applications (inbound & outbound) using the APIs available from http://www.clickatell.com/. I'm not sure if they are the cheapest out there (as low as $0.01/msg received); however, we have found their API to be one of the easiest to use. We've also developed a few applications using direct connections to a device. The biggest problems we ran into when using a device were: finding a phone that would charge over USB from a computer (not all do), reliable cellular coverage while inside a cabinet and/or closet, wireless plans with 'unlimited' txt messaging plans can get 'expensive', and a device that isn't plagued by lockups during high-volume messaging. -- Brandon Lehmann BitRadius, LLC Email: brandon at bitradius.com Web: http://www.bitradius.com Phone: 567-255-3610x9500 Toll-Free: 888-608-7253x9500 Fax: 567-255-3611 On Fri, 7 Aug 2009 21:06:19 -0400 (EDT), "Alex Balashov" <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:

Let me add something else here:

Obviously, there are various ways to get this data off of a cell device that rely on use of a network rather than SMS, and can be bridged straight into IP. That would be far more straightforward, cheaper and more sensible.

However, that defeats one of the specific problems I'm trying to solve here, which is that the operating area has very, very spotty 3G/EDGE/EVDO/etc. coverage, but always has basic digital coverage.

...

Hi everyone,

Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but I thought I would tap the enormous collective wealth of knowledge here.

I come from the fixed-line world, so I don't know terribly much about

SMS

...

or mobile anything.

I have a situation where I need an endpoint to receive a fairly large amount of SMS messages in something close to real-time and then be able to automatically do something with them as part of a backoffice process, and need to set up something rather quickly.

For example, an SMS message comes into some sort of device or service, and this triggers a RESTful HTTP call (or SOAP, or whatever) to some agent that does something with that data.

Speed is of the essence; this rules out most SMS-to-email gateways because it usually takes at least several minutes to receive the e-mail. In this case, that won't work; the delay is just too long.

Likewise, vertically integrated SMS gateway services that provide some sort of interactive online "chat" window with an interface into an SMS conversation won't do. This needs to be development-friendly; I need to be able to write some code to do something with the contents of that message post haste. The other thing is, vendors providing those products and services in this category charge a fair bit per text message, which isn't going to fly in this case because there may be a dozen text messages per minute or more, occasionally. Something flat-rate would be desirable, even if it's expensive (say, a few hundred dollars a month).

Lastly, I don't know if it's possible to get any kind of access circuit in North America over which SMS messages can be received, but even if it were, that's not really an option in this case due to time constraints. Likewise, setting up a GSM or CDMA receiver device registered on a cell network - legitimately or otherwise - is out too, for similar reasons.

What it really comes down to is that I need a fast SMS data relay service that handle a relatively high-volume at relatively little expense, and one which can provide that data via some sort of HTTP or XML-RPC or SOAP type API callback so that the data can be plumbed to an agent on my side for further processing.

I have no idea if something like this exists, or if that's tantamount to a request for magic. That's why I'm inquiring.

Thanks!

-- Alex Balashov Evariste Systems Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671 Mobile : (+1) (678) 237-1775