[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SMS Carrier gateways for MVNO's

[Justin Hopkins 📖]

Hi Josh,

We've fielded many help desk tickets from our libraries on this
question. We typically explain the issue to them as "unless they know
the underlying carrier it won't work for them". I learned something
today about the model number of their phone being indicative of the
carrier. That's good to know. One thing though, for AT&T- is the the
word "potato" or the roasted sweet potato emoji 🍠?

This reminds me of a discussion from a while back about trying to
gauge the interest of libraries to employ an honest to goodness SMS
solution. Personally I think it's a great idea, and while not free
it's also not very expensive. I can't put a dollar amount on the value
to the libraries, but based on the nature of our help desk tickets
concerning sms notifications and "text call number" opac feature I'd
say it has considerable value. At some point I had Blake doing some
queries to get at a number of texts send per month and IIRC the cost
would be less than $70/mo for the entire Missouri Evergreen consortium
at current Twilio rates.

Cheers,
Justin

On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 2:11 PM, Josh Stompro <stomproj at exchange.larl.org> wrote:
> Hello, I’m interested in how other sites handle SMS hold notices for
> customers that use Mobile virtual network operators like Straight Talk, Ting
> and Tracfone?  They all offer phones that work on different physical
> carriers, and the gateway seems to be different for each one.  The default
> Straight Talk sms carrier entry included in Evergreen is for Verizon, but if
> the user has a AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint  based phone the Verizon gateway
> won’t work.  Do you setup variants for each of the physical carriers?  Do
> users actually know which physical carrier they are on in your experience if
> you give them the option to choose?  I’m not looking forward having to
> explain that for Straight Talk if the model number of your phone ends with a
> v or an w it is on the Verizon network, and if it ends in potato it is on
> at&t, etc.
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Josh



-- 
Regards,
Justin