I'm not stating that SMS delivery isn't cheap. It is. Someone along the way between users and your application - either SMS gateway providers or telcos or both - are making huge profits. Just because a service is inexpensive to provide doesn't mean anyone has to provide the service for cheap.
I'll admit it's been a while since I've worked with SMS gateways. If you have a provider that will do SMS shortcodes for cheap prices, please feel free to link them. Last time I worked with short code providers, they wanted a setup fee in the thousands, took 2 months to deliver, then charged a few cents for each outgoing and incoming SMS. On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:29 AM, djidjadji <[email protected]> wrote: > And if you know that SMS traffic does not cost any bandwidth for the > provider it should be as cheap as email. > SMS messages are transmitted over the network in the slots used for > network management. When there are no management messages to be send. > That is the reason they are limited in length, these slots are fixed > size. > > 2010/5/17 Ikai L (Google) <[email protected]>: > > I worked with SMS (outgoing and incoming) a few years ago. 3 cents is, > > believe it or not, the ballpark going rate (it was 5-10 cents then). You > can > > negotiate a bulk deal with various SMS gateways if you're big, but it's > > never going to be as cheap as email. The silver lining is that it > prevents > > SMS spam, since it costs too much to do it. > > > > On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 8:26 AM, GAEfan <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> Thanks, guys. 3 cents per message does not sound like much, but it is > >> not scalable. > >> > >> I set this up sending SMS via email. A couple of warnings for > >> everyone: > >> > >> 1) AT&T does not auto-truncate the message to 160 characters, so you > >> must write a script to do that. If you don't, AT&T breaks it up into > >> multiple messages, and the receiver will get billed for 20 cents per > >> each 160 chars. > >> 2) When sending via email, EVERYTHING counts in the 160 characters: > >> your FROM address (HINT: get a new admin address with a single > >> letter), the recipients address (22 chars right there), SUBJECT, BODY, > >> and the header labels (FRM:, SUBJ:, MSG:), plus another 8 or 9 > >> characters (maybe the date or the fake number GAE sends from). So, > >> you end up with A LOT less than 160 chars to send in the body. > >> > >> Here is my script: > >> > >> chars_available = 160 - 39 - len(subject) - len(to) # the 39 is for > >> the length of the sender address, header labels, etc. > >> if chars_available < 0: > >> chars_available = 0 > >> message = mail.EmailMessage( > >> sender = "[email protected]", # shorten your from address. This > >> requires a new GAE admin acccount > >> subject = subject, > >> body = body[:chars_available], > >> to = to > >> ) > >> > >> Would love to see a true SMS feature in GAE! > >> > >> -- > >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups > >> "Google App Engine" group. > >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > >> [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> > . > >> For more options, visit this group at > >> http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Ikai Lan > > Developer Relations, Google App Engine > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/ikai > > Delicious: http://delicious.com/ikailan > > ---------------- > > Google App Engine links: > > Blog: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/app_engine > > Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "Google App Engine" group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> > . > > For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<google-appengine%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > > -- Ikai Lan Developer Relations, Google App Engine Twitter: http://twitter.com/ikai Delicious: http://delicious.com/ikailan ---------------- Google App Engine links: Blog: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/app_engine Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
