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

[Ryan Eby]

We don't use it for evergreen or all our notices yet but I'd like to 
give another +1 for Twilio and similar SMS API providers. We use Twilio 
heavily during our summer reading / game (about 32k sms last aug, 24k in 
july) and have never had a problem. They tend to be proactive letting us 
know when a carrier is having delays or issues (think was only once in 
last few years) and they do queuing and splitting so you don't end up 
blocked.

We've also never had to deal with support issues related to them or 
deliverability (just our own code). Patrons just need to associate their 
number and it is forgiving on format, no provider drop downs or other 
areas for error.

While not free the cost probably balances out with the lack of problems 
and it actually working for patrons.

------
Ryan Eby
Ann Arbor District Library

On 2 Feb 2016, at 9:20, Boyer, Jason A wrote:

> What we've done in the past (since it's only come up once or twice, 
> this doesn't exactly scale...) is manually send emails to the various 
> gateways with just the name of the carrier as the contents. Then they 
> can tell what to choose.
>
> I had initially thought it would be cool to set up a "real" SMS 
> gateway with a CDMA/GSM modem and some code, but there are a lot of 
> things that would be cool that I've never gotten around to, so you can 
> guess how that's turned out.
>
> Jason
>
> --
> Jason Boyer
> Indiana State Library
> http://library.in.gov/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Open-ils-general 
> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf 
> Of Josh Stompro
> Sent: Monday, February 01, 2016 10:31 PM
> To: Evergreen Discussion Group
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SMS Carrier gateways for MVNO's
>
> **** This is an EXTERNAL email. Exercise caution. DO NOT open 
> attachments or click links from unknown senders or unexpected email. 
> **** ________________________________
>
> Justin, here is an article that has helped me in the past figure it 
> out, 
> http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2011/12/how-to-get-tracfone-net10-or-straight.html
>
> Unfortunately it isn't quite as simple as looking at the serial 
> number, that only works for some non-smartphone models.
>
> +1 to supporting a commercial SMS option, be it twilio or another 
> company.  Making SMS text messages easier for users to enter would be 
> great.
>
> Josh
>
> -----Original Message--
> From: Open-ils-general 
> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf 
> Of Justin Hopkins ??
> Sent: Monday, February 1, 2016 3:43 PM
> To: Evergreen Discussion Group
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SMS Carrier gateways for MVNO's
>
> 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