Version

Argent Advanced Technology 3.1A-1410-A or earlier

Date

Monday, 22 Dec 2014

Summary

Argent AT can use email gateway to send SMS messages

The SMS email gateway can be used as a backup for SMS modem, or the sole mechanism sending SMS messages when SMS modem is not used

Customer may find some phone numbers won’t receive SMS messages where others work fine

It turns out that the phone numbers not working belongs to different carriers

The issue has been addressed in Argent AT 3.1A-1501-A

To configure SMS email gateway, customer has to configure SMTP email first

Otherwise, he will get a message when trying to save SMS settings

After having configured SMTP email, customer simply selects the appropriate carrier on SMS configuration screen

The most important point is to select the carrier of phone numbers used in SMS Alert, not the SIM card used in SMS modem

The internal will be explained fully in Technical Background section

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The difficulty comes when the phone numbers used in SMS alert belongs to different carriers

To address the issue, customer should pick the carrier used most, and specify the gateway explicitly in SMS Alert definition for the small leftover

For example, customer has three hypothetical technical support numbers for SMS Alert:

1. (212) 111-5555 (AT & T)
2. (212) 222-6666 (AT & T)
3. (518) 333-7777 (Verizon Wireless)

Because most of the phone numbers are AT & T, customer should select AT&T as email gateway in SMS setting

When defining a SMS alert to the Verizon number, the phone number should be ‘5183337777@vtext.com’ instead of ‘5183337777’

The specified email gateway is used only when sending message through email

It is stripped if the message is sent through SMS modem

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Technical Background

Argent AT uses SMS email gateway to send SMS message when either SMS modem is not working or not used at all

The internal to send SMS message is to send the message to email address by appending email gateway to the phone number

For example, it is phone_number@txt.att.net for AT & T, phone_number@vtext.com for Verizon Wireless

The email gateway specified in SMS setting actually defines the default email gateway

If the phone number in SMS Alert does not include email gateway, the default email gateway is assumed

Argent AT uses SMS_EMAIL_GATEWAYS.TXT to keep the commonly used SMS email gateways

Customer can find this text file under ARGENT CONSOLE home directory

Resolution

Upgrade to Argent AT 3.1A-1501-A or later