Andreas,
This is a nice overview. One thing which I have been thinking about for a
while had to do with if Customer B is not able to receive the message. It
appears that Customer A's SMSC has to hold this message in its storage while
it waits for Customer B to turn the phone on. How does the network of
Customer B notify A's SMSC that it is available? Does A's SMSC have access
to the flag in the HLR that states that it has a message waiting, or is this
flag only available to SMSC's that are withint he B's network?
Also one other point, during a reply, if the Reply-Path flag is set and
Customer A is sending a reply to Customer B, my understanding is that the
SMSC of Customer B (the customer receiving the reply) would be the one that
stores the SMS. The SMSC of Customer A would be bypassed. Is this your
belief as well?
Gaurav
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Andreas Fink
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 5:33 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: SMSC operators in Europe
>Hi all,
>we are using kannel with the siemens M20 modem, but, in the near future,
we'll
>need an SMSC connection via internet.
>We asked to a couple of italian telecom operators and they said that
>they don't
>provide access with standard protocols (SMPP,EMI,SEMA, etc..) to their
SMSC's
>any more.
>The point is that thay cannot calculate the exact invoice for
>roaming use of the
>SMS'es. So they have developed a proprietary protocol, that help
>them with this,
>on wich is based a proprietary software sold at 2,5k Euro !!! One of these
>telecom operator is a Vodaphone company.
>We would like to know what the situation is out there. Are others european
>telecom operators planning to close their SMSC to 'standard protocols'?
>If the situation is different we could plan to subscribe a contract with an
>e.t.o. other than italian.
>Finally, do you know how they calculate the invoice for roaming SMS ?
>
>Any indication would be very helpful and appreciated.
As far as I know the problem is as following:
Carrier A and Carrier B have both roaming agreements with each other.
Now if you are customer of carrier A and you send a message to
customer of carrier B, it is going through carrier A's SMSC which
will be billing you as a customer, and will be directly sent to
customer B's phone. Carrier B's SMSC is NOT involved which means
carrier B will not have any logs of the message being transmitted
through his network. In other words Carrier B doesnt get any money
out of it. This was completely forgotton in the GSM associations
standard roaming contracts. Technically its also very difficult to
manage because you have to count SMS on a completely different place
(on some SS7 device instead of on the SMSC).
I know one carrier who follows the following policy:
If a customer sends a message to their customer they dont gain
anything but there is a high chance that their customer is going to
reply to the message which will make the scenario be inverted. So
statistically they end up on even ground.
However other carriers have different views. I know for example that
the carriers in france have completely closed their network for
incoming messages from outside. This has nothing to do with SMSC
direct access but also affects users who type messages on their
handsets.
In the case of Omnitel in Italy, I know that they use a strange SMSC
protocol which is not supported by Kannel yet (I got the specs and it
wouldnt be that hard to implement), they have found agreements with
Swisscom in Switzerland to charge each other for originated and
terminated messages. Meaning a message terminating on the omnitel
network is 100 Lire more expensive than a message terminating inside
swisscom's network. The odd story of this is that the price to
terminate a message in Omnitel's network from inside the omnitel's
network is cheaper than that making terminating into Omnitel for
large accounts very expensive.
I dont know why anyone should close their access to their SMSC's if
they sell the service. The only thing they close is that you can use
one SMSC to reach the world because the receiving networks give you
trouble.
Some SMSC dont allow connection via TCP/IP because they are not able
to do so (the carriers are too stupid to set up TCP/IP on such a
box...).
For those of you new to SMSC's, you can take a look at a powerpoint
presentation I've once made to explain this a bit (I remember I had a
hard time understanding why SMSC's work different compared to e-mail
servers). Its on http://www.smsrelay.com/ppt/smsrelay-carrier.htm or
http://www.smsrelay.com/ppt/smsrelay-carrier.ppt (for those who own
power point).
--
