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sending and receiving SMS

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 9:27 am
by katzy
Using the "official" ICQ client I can send and receive SMS messages with phones on the "Cellcom" network in Israel. When I use Adium I can receive mesages from a phone, but when I try to reply I get "Could not send because +197252[phone#] is not available".

When I "get info" on the sending number, Adium IDs it as an AIM account (if that makes a difference)...

Any ideas?

--Katzy

Re: sending and receiving SMS

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 10:52 am
by evands
katzy wrote:Using the "official" ICQ client I can send and receive SMS messages with phones on the "Cellcom" network in Israel. When I use Adium I can receive mesages from a phone, but when I try to reply I get "Could not send because +197252[phone#] is not available".

When I "get info" on the sending number, Adium IDs it as an AIM account (if that makes a difference)...

Any ideas?

--Katzy
Interesting. I've only used this with AIM, and with US numbers. Do you have a Cellcom Israel cell number? If so, I would appreciate it if you would email me (evan@adiumx.com) the number so I can test sending to it -- I promise not to call it or do anything ridiculous with it like giving it to anyone else :)

Re: sending and receiving SMS

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 12:16 pm
by ofri
katzy wrote:Using the "official" ICQ client I can send and receive SMS messages with phones on the "Cellcom" network in Israel. When I use Adium I can receive mesages from a phone, but when I try to reply I get "Could not send because +197252[phone#] is not available".

When I "get info" on the sending number, Adium IDs it as an AIM account (if that makes a difference)...

Any ideas?

--Katzy
Does ICQ supports sending to other networks in israel? If it supports orange i'll be happy to test it.

P.S.
it's nice to see another israeli adiumer :lol:

Re: sending and receiving SMS

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 12:37 pm
by katzy
ofri wrote:
katzy wrote:Using the "official" ICQ client I can send and receive SMS messages with phones on the "Cellcom" network in Israel. When I use Adium I can receive mesages from a phone, but when I try to reply I get "Could not send because +197252[phone#] is not available".

When I "get info" on the sending number, Adium IDs it as an AIM account (if that makes a difference)...

Any ideas?

--Katzy
Does ICQ supports sending to other networks in israel? If it supports orange i'll be happy to test it.

P.S.
it's nice to see another israeli adiumer :lol:
According to the ICQ website, they support Cellcom and Pelephone... so I guess that rules out Orange... Sorry...

P.S. It's nice to see another Israeli Mac user(!)

ani gam b'eretz

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 5:51 pm
by mogabog
If you need a Pelephone # to test on, email me.

It is also nice for me to see mac users in Israel

A

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:19 pm
by Lyg
I thought in the +1, the one stood for USA (or North America), much like the DVD region codes. Can anyone clear this up for me?

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:36 pm
by katzy
Lyg wrote:I thought in the +1, the one stood for USA (or North America), much like the DVD region codes. Can anyone clear this up for me?
At first I assumed that also-- when you call the USA from anywhere else the "country code" is "1"-- so at first I was trying "+972..." (972 is Israel's country code)... when that didn't work I had the bright idea to send a message from my phone to ICQ to see how the # showed up in Adium-- and it was+1972... of course that doesn't work either... maybe that's part of the problem

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 9:20 pm
by ofri
Does the oscar protocol treat phones the same as contacts? I mean if i send a message to a contact number which is actually a phone number will the servers know that they should send SMS message instead of a "normal" one?

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 11:04 pm
by tedger
actually you have to dial a one no matter what you are calling in the united states so to call internationally it would be 1-<country code>-<area code>-<prefix>-<4 digits> like 1-1-555-555-1234. The 1 lets the phone network know that you aren't making a local call. Seeing as ICQ and AOL (who own ICQ) are in the states the extra 1 makes sense as it's an international call. I'm sure that ICQ/AOL has some crazy telephone deal that makes it so these calls basically cost them nothing but it's still an international call.

Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 9:15 am
by evands
Note, for clarification: You use the +1 even for US numbers. +15551112222

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:46 pm
by barnaclebarnes
tedger wrote:actually you have to dial a one no matter what you are calling in the united states so to call internationally it would be 1-<country code>-<area code>-<prefix>-<4 digits> like 1-1-555-555-1234. The 1 lets the phone network know that you aren't making a local call. Seeing as ICQ and AOL (who own ICQ) are in the states the extra 1 makes sense as it's an international call. I'm sure that ICQ/AOL has some crazy telephone deal that makes it so these calls basically cost them nothing but it's still an international call.
Actually in the US to get an international line you dial 011 AFAIK. In the UK it is 00 to get an international line. Other countries may be different but on the whole I have found '00' tends to work. Once you have an international line you then dial the country code (1 for US, 44 for the UK and 64 for New Zealand). Then it's the area code (No leading 0) and finally the number.

Text messages will be routed through an SMS aggregator. Their main access number is probably in the US if the number starts with +1. Once the aggregator gets it it will route it via the internet to the ICQ client. On the return path they will have agreements with all the phone networks to pair with them and send messages. Usually this will be charged on a per message basis (depending on volume this could be 2 cents -> 20 cents.) My guess is that since chat generates lots of return messages from the phone ICQ gets these outgoing messages for free as the phone user will pay for the return message and generate revenue for the network at a pretty good margin (20 cents a message here in NZ, 10p in the UK).

The cool thing about the ICQ system is that it has the extra string of numbers at the end of the access number to route the message back to the correct recipient.

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 8:21 pm
by lankybutmacho
So does anybody out there know anything about the feasibility of sending SMS messages from AOL/ICQ to an international phone number? I'm in France, and have not yet figured out a way to do it. The country code for France is 33, and we'll say my cell phone number is 06 55 55 55 55. So far I've tried every combination I could think of such as +1330655555555, +330655555555, and dropping the first 0, +133655555555 and +33655555555. None of these seem to work, so I'm starting to think it's not possible.

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 9:53 pm
by katzy
lankybutmacho wrote:So does anybody out there know anything about the feasibility of sending SMS messages from AOL/ICQ to an international phone number? I'm in France, and have not yet figured out a way to do it. The country code for France is 33, and we'll say my cell phone number is 06 55 55 55 55. So far I've tried every combination I could think of such as +1330655555555, +330655555555, and dropping the first 0, +133655555555 and +33655555555. None of these seem to work, so I'm starting to think it's not possible.
According to the ICQ website, they only offer SMS service in Australia, Canada, Israel, Singapore & Taiwan (and only with certain carriers in each country).

No idea how AIM works w/ cell #s...