On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 11:22 PM, Hans Guth <[email protected]> wrote: > ok - so just diving into this world of sms. Here's my question. We are > paying for a hosted pbx service whereby a potential home buyer calls 800#. > We then text them back property information to their cell phone using > this same pbx company's sms service. They are charging $150 per month for > 1000 texts. I am wondering will I be able to do that through the use of > kannel and save that money?
Your provider sells you a bundle of 1000 sms/month for $150 meaning 15 cents/sms. There are two ways of connecting Kannel to your SMS provider. The first one is to connect directly to the SMS Center (SMSC) [1] via Short Message Peer 2 Peer (SMPP) [2] protocol. This means that you'll have to setup a machine with Kannel running on it which will connect to the SMSC. >From commercial point of view, the provider will sell you X SMS/sec, hour or >so. You'll have to pay for certain amount of messages per time interval, or you'll pay for the amount the messages you'll send. This means that you'll end up in the same position as you are now. The second option is to use mobile phone or GSM modem as a SMSC. This means that you'll set up Kannel box to which you'll connect mobile phone or a GSM modem. This way you'll pay the same way as you do when you are sending messages from your mobile phone. The good thing about this is that you'll pay only the messages that you send (you won't have to pay 1000 messages per month when you've only sent 300 for example) and you can choose some rate plan from your mobile operator which is designed for subscribers who send large number of SMSs. By choosing a proper rate plan and planing the message sending you can save some money. Comparing this to your current solution, this means that you have to find cheaper SMS than 15 cents or send less than 1000 messages/month Setting up a Kannel depends on the connection that you will use. Search the archives for connection types, commonly used gsm modems and read the user guide. References: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service_center [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_peer-to-peer_protocol BR, Jovan
