Hi Simon, On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:44 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm quite interested in how a commercial gateway/bulk sms provider works.
>From a technical point of view, you make an agreement with some mobile provider to give you direct SMPP connection with the SMSC and than you will use SMPP client like Kannel or some other, to send messages. The provider will configure the SMSC connection the way you will agree, enable you sending/receiving messages to some particular countries, short codes and give you throughput of X messages per second. The components you need are database with phone numbers and messages, a program which will read the database and send requests to the SMPP client and a SMPP client which will be connected to the provider's SMSC. >From commercial point of view, you have to send huge amount of messages per day/month to insure that you'll get lower price per sent sms or you can make an agreement with the provider for revenue sharing. > Is there any literature available on the internet or as a book ? I would suggest you to read How to Build an SMS Service by Brian Retford, Jordan Schwartz The book covers the basics of SMS, possible services and their implementation. Here is a link to the book: http://books.google.com/books?id=9qI_nY52tDQC&pg=PA1&dq=How+to+Build+an+SMS+Service&ei=LMMCSprUI4LszATH1PCpBg#PPT4,M1 If the link doesn't work go to http://books.google.com and search for the book ;) > I guess there's no easy way to use ones own smsc as message centre ? Maybe a > free sim card or anything similar ? No, there isn't. It costs a lot (usually thousands or millions dollars) and the you have to make agreements for interconnection with other providers, which means becoming a provider ;) There is no such thing as free SIM, the only thing you can get is some privileged tariff plan with which won't pay a lot per sent SMS, but again you have to send large number of messages. The other problem is that you'll be in a queue with the other subscribers which means slower delivery and your sending message queue on the SMSC side is limited to 10-15 or so messages, which means that if you send the messages fast some messages will be dropped. BR, Jovan
