TUTORIAL Send SMS Messages w/o Google

[wardmundy]

In light of the upcoming demise of Gtalk and XMPP support in Asterisk, we're beginning a transition to Google-free applications where we can.

For background on the Google Voice XMPP mess:

http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2013/05/hangouts-wont-hangout-with-other.html

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/05/20/2315216/google-drops-xmpp-support

https://plus.google.com/u/0/116276248303121270590/posts/ggNwh9eLYWu

It is easy to send SMS messages without reliance upon the Perl gvoice CLI utility. It's a little more work on the front end, but there are no limitations on the number of free SMS messages you can send... unlike with Google. Here's how.

1. Identify the phone number of your recipient
2. Visit tnid.us and enter the number to identify the cellphone carrier
3. Look up the Email-to-SMS Gateway for the cellphone carrier on Wikipedia
4. Write down the SMS email address for your recipient, e.g. [email protected]
5. Prepare a message using bash or build a script with each SMS recipient like this:

echo -e "\004" | mail -r [email protected] -s "Your SMS message goes here" [email protected]

And here's a little trick to receive SMS messages using an SMS-simulated email address:

1. Create an sms subdomain off of an existing domain you own, e.g. sms.pbxinaflash.com
2. Add an email forwarder to the new subdomain: [email protected]
3. Add a destination for the email forwarder using your actual email address or an SMS email address as outlined in #1-4 above
4. Use the new email address from step #2 here as the -r return address in your bash commands shown in step #5 above.

echo -e "\004" | mail -r [email protected] -s "Your SMS message goes here" [email protected]

 

[Trimline2]

Ward:

This site has more up-to-date cell phone information than does http://tnid.us - try using http://www.freerevcell.com/ instead.

My cell is even properly listed after porting twice.. even formats the "to" addy for you.

 

[bobkoure]

From the 'turning everything into a script' standpoint...
tnid.us uses HTML 'get' so you can just put your own phone number into the URL http://tnid.us/lookup/5555551212/, but then you need to grovel through the returned HTML to find the carrier, then do a lookup.

Freerevcell uses javascript (with db lookup that might be subvert-able, but that's rude) - also after testing it with my own number about four times it told me I'd reached my daily limit of lookups.

Did a quick google, and see there's also carrierlookup. they limit free lookups to 1 per day, but also have an API, and bill .01/lookup. With local caching, I'd be surprised if I spent more than a dollar a year on this. No idea how accurate they are.

And, of course, you could just send email to that number at every sms-email gateway - and all but one will bounce.