Hello,
I have a question concerning kannel. It's not that technical, but I've been
reading through the list and it seems it would still be a good place to
inquire. I have been working towards a SMS application where I simply need to
send quite a few messages out from a central server, pretty much all at once.
Probably several thousand an hour max, but not continuosly. Then a response
is expected back , but not mandatory. I should say I am in the US, and all
messaging will be within the US.
As I have reluctantly learned, in the US one needs a short code to do any sort
of business like this. Fine, so I am stuck with a $500/mo bill whether I send
receive messsages or not. (The corporate lobbies here have apparently won that
battle before the public really knew what hit them... sorry, I am digressing.)
In my searching for how to go about performing this task I have
found there's lots of folks that want to be a middle man in this business and
frankly I can't afford to pay a middle man to do this sort of business. This
lead me to kannel. I enjoy working through my linux server at home, and it
seems like it can cut out a middle man at least to some extent - I think. If I
am on track, then I see that one still needs a SMSC connection, that charges
per SMS, and the short code is by law, so there's really no way around most of
it. Now, these commercial SMSCs have their own APIs (e.g. clickatell) to
connect and transfer the text messages that can work fairly straight
forwardly. Personally I don't like giving them any more reason to exist than I
have too, and very much like the idea of having something like kannel to chop
out whatever part they have in this game. Utilizing my linux box is an even
better plus. My question is finally, what
does kannel do that the commercial SMSC APIs cannot do for the small intities,
like myself, that just want to send and receive lots of texts as simply (and of
course cheaply) as possible?
Sorry this is so long winded, I promise any additional replies won't be!
-Matt
