sms through gprs

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garyt

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#300 28-Jun-2003 23:00

Hi there, is it possible to send a short text message from a GPRS phone using the GPRS not the sms side or function of the phone, to a non GPRS phone and for that non GPRS phone to receive it as an sms?
In other words, if i buy a load of MB from my service provider and get them down to about 0.0001c per kb, can i configure my phone to send out my text sms messages using gprs instead of sms and hence save money on texting?
I know the GPRS is a different technology than sms, but there was talk about enabling sms through gprs, but dont know if it ever happened. Please dont try to answer with too many technical terms as i am not a programmer by ny means. A mobile phone technician has told us that it can be done, but then another said it is impossible....so i am a touch confused.

I dare say the phone companies could do it if they wanted but suppose that they have not?

thanks

gary

freitasm

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#534 29-Jun-2003 10:47

I know there's an option for that in some mobile phones. The question is really cost: GPRS plans charge in blocks, and most cases it's 10Kbytes. A SMS is no more than 160 bytes addressing information.

In reality you'll be paying for a 10Kbytes block but using justunder 1Kbytes - that's a 9Kbytes of paid but unused traffic.

garyt

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#537 29-Jun-2003 21:58

THanks for that, but i wonder with which phones you can do it. THe cost is the reason for doing it because in our company we pay per KB not per 10 and the price is a fraction of the cost of an sms, so when we send thousands of sms's each month, it will save us a great deal of money, but need to know how to do it and if can do it for sure?
With an sms, the message goes through the service providers server and then gets sent to the customer, can this same server receive gprs messages and convert them to sms signal and send them to their customers, this is the real question I think, but as i said i am not technical so maybe this is not the question and the question is the phone capability.

Who do you think I could find out from for sure?

thanks

gary

freitasm

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#538 29-Jun-2003 23:09

If you pay by Kbyte instead of bigger blocks, it might be more economical... You should contact your provider.

I've just tested with Vodafone New Zealand, changing the SMS connection on my Nokia 3650 from GSM to GPRS and it worked fine. I didn't see the blinking G that shows when sending e-mails (over GPRS), so I'm not sure if it tried GPRS and did a fallback to GSM.

garyt

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#541 30-Jun-2003 02:31

thanks, the problem is here in spain the providers know very little! We meet with them tomorrow to try and get a definite answer out of them, i jut wanted some ammo to have to say it is possible to do or is not. They said it is, but others have said the technology is incompatible and you cannot send sms through gprs...

So thanks anyway.
gary

killernz

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#1095 19-Aug-2003 11:05

Hi,

The functionality definately not been turned on to allow SMS over GPRS Network has not been turned on in Vodafone NZ.

Cheers
Hamish @ Vodafone

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#1098 19-Aug-2003 18:50

I remember changing the setting from 'SMS' to 'GPRS' when I was using an Ericsson GSM phone. The SMS service still worked fine, but I was still charged 20c because it the messages were still going through Vodafone's message server.