Posts Tagged ‘email gateway’

Occasionally really cool pieces of technology get forgotten and lay unused for long periods of time. It’s just the nature of the beast.

I recall back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s using email to sms gateways for sending alerts and other useful sysadmin stuff. But as I haven’t had a sysadmin hat on for a long time, it was really just not something I’ve had to think about lately.

So, we’re sitting at the office, discussing Tech and the usual stuff when Ralph pops up with; Hey! I can do email to SMS on Alltel.

Whereas it used to be difficult to find an email to SMS gateway in Australia, it looks like more of the providers here in the states provide one free of charge. The way they can do this by the way, is that unlike Australia, over here you are charged to both send and receive an SMS. Which means that the telco’s are more than happy to provide these services.

Ok to email an SMS to someone on alltel you email to their phone number @ message.alltel.com  for instance 5554564567@message.alltel.com (this is a made up number using the famous 555 area code from the movies, i don’t believe it’s a real number and I sure hope it isn’t.)

One cool feature is that the person receiving the text message can then reply via SMS and it will be sent back as an email.

You can also directly sms to email. The wikipedia page I’ve linked below has the codes and addresses for all major carriers. Bare in mind that as I said above, in the states, for the most part unless the person has unlimited texting as part of their phone package they’re being charged a fee to receive their message. For me, it’s right around 15 cents a message on my crappy pre paid phone.

There is plenty more info at this wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway

Happy Texting

Shane