What is SMS Message? Cellular carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile use different types of mobile network technologies to allow its users to send an SMS message and receive text messages. Even if you have a different carrier from that of your friends’ or relatives’, it would still be possible for you to communicate with them seamlessly.
An SMS gateway is a telecommunications device that enables messages to go into a mobile network’s airwave (GSM, CDMA) via a Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) application. Once routed, phone users should then be able to send or receive their text messages successfully.
These gateways are designed to read different carrier languages to avoid any incompatibility issues that may come with sending a text blast to numerous recipients spread across different carriers.
If you’re planning to build your own online SMS app to send SMS messages, expect to encounter a lot of scenarios related to SMS gateways. For example, without an SMS gateway, it would be impossible for your app to work how it should to send and receive text messages. And you would need to invest more time and money in developing a solution that would make your app compatible with the carriers’ respective network protocols and languages.
This is why it’s also important for you to know a few things about how US carriers use such gateways and how this may influence you in choosing the right service provider.
Short Message Service Center (SMSC)
SMSC allows carriers to handle the text messaging process like forwarding, routing, and storing all incoming SMS messages. However, what you might not know is that each carrier develops its own SMSC that is compatible with other service centers.
So, if you have an SMS app and it happens to be incompatible with any other SMSCs, it’s a dead end for you. That’s right; your app is practically unusable at this point.
What you need is an SMS gateway to break this barrier. You can start by looking for SMS gateway providers and see that they have to offer. Choose a service provider that has all the features that you may need for your app or SMS message campaign such as follows:
- Safe and secure
- Reliable tech support
- Reporting feature
- Little to no downtime
- API integration
Now that you know what is SMS message, you may very well be off to starting your own SMS marketing campaigns.