SMS Text News sponsor, Clickatell, are fairly chalking up the announcements this month.
Link: Clickatell Leads Charge for Global SMS Capability: Financial News – Yahoo!
Finance
Clickatell Inc., the world’s #1 global mobile messaging operator, today announced its customers can receive reply SMSs using its popular Communicator application. Visitors to CTIA Wireless in Orlando from 27 – 29 March will be able to see demonstrations of the service at Clickatell’s booth # 4668.
With strong coverage in the North American market, the two-way, or reply SMS, functionality is available on a record breaking 400+ networks worldwide.
This launch of two-way text functionality allows Clickatell customers to receive replies to the local and international SMSs they have sent, straight to their Communicator inbox. This powerful functionality allows businesses and consumers to engage in a dialogue or launch a response-centric alert program.
Don’t underestimate the value of two-way connectivity. It’s absolutely critical in my view. I can remember trying to get that functionality in America a few years back. Geez, it was that difficult, we had to host SIM cards in London on Nokias. I kid ye not. So excellent news from Clickatell.
(If, by the way, you’re hunting for some sort of SMS connectivity, do talk to Clickatell or drop me a note and I can introduce you. I’ve introduced quite a few readers in the past months and they’ve all reported super service.)
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Whilst impressive, I would offer one word of caution. If the inbound number is not a national number. Charges to the person sending the message could be higher than they are expecting.
You don’t necessarily have to host SIMs anymore. Many operators will provide cross network Virtual Mobile numbers that can be used for terminating SMS at local rates.
I do agree that 2 way SMS is vital. What other business communication method doesn’t allow you to respond?
This is a cool feature from Clickatell!
I have run into a small problem though. Do you know any way to identify which particular SMS message is being responded to? For example, if I send 3 SMS’s to a mobile, and the phone owner responds to one, I’d like to be able to identify which SMS they are responding to. I’m using Clickatells HTTP api, but can’t seem to figure out a way to accomplish this.
Colin,
I believe with Clickatell if you have their inbound service you can add extra numbers to the end of the MSISDN, however it’s not recommended as a lot of mobile carriers don’t support it (especially here in the UK).
What you *could* do is send all the different messages from a different originator, then match up the replies to the original messages and do it that way. I’ve done something similar with our SMSBrite site, shout if you need me to talk you through how it’s done.
Alex