I need to find a tst message replacement for the carriers txting. For what ever reason those who are on ATT are not getting texting from a group distribution list. All is good on our end but ATT seems unwilling to look into this (and this is for E911 emergency responders) .
So I am looking for a preferably free texting service where one can use the standard format of email to texting (as that is how we are set up).
Your context is not entirely clear. You want to send text messages to cell phones, but sent as emails? The only way to do that is with an email client. If users on ATT are not getting messages sent to their phones in the form of emails, then it probably doesn’t matter how you send them, they are still going to be processed by ATT the same way. (The example email address you gave is the standard that Verizon uses, BTW.) There are many services that offer text messaging over the Internet without using the carrier’s integrated text messaging, such WhatsApp. I also use Facebook Messenger with my kids. But I don’t see any advantage in using those vs. sending using your email client.
Can you describe your overall business problem a little more?
I want the content of the message to be sent as a email but arrive as a text (again does not have to be a carrier text, but any service that can get texts such as perhaps facebook messenger - as long as the phone will notify the person of a incoming message). As I believe you understand.
911 dispatches are sent out via pagers and txting to responders. Due to a upcoming Frequency change some members do not have pagers as they will be obsolete. Also often people don’t carry the pagers at times. These people use the txting system to get these messages.
The 911 system will send out a email in the format of email to txt to all members called to respond. Their system sends out a email in the general form of:
to: 1-222-222-2222@vtext.com; 1-222-222-3434@sprint.com; 1-222-222-3322@att.com etc.
Subject: Auto accident on county road 12, cross streets are etc.
Once the carrier, such as verizon gets the email ‘1222-222-2222@vtext.com’, they convert it to a text and send it to the phone. The member who has that verizon number gets the text with the above message.
However ATT is not working, nor do they seem interested in finding out why, so I am looking for a replacement that can work with the 911 system of a phone number + carrier to a texting app format.
I just sent myself a text message by emailing to 10digitphonenumber@txt.att.net (just the ten digit phone number, no leading 1). Maybe your format is wrong? Are you sending to txt.att.net?
How welded in stone is the 911 system? What you describe literally is insoluble - you have asked that the system email the carrier - and that is exactly what isn’t working. In general there are many systems that provide application to person (A2P) SMS services. The email gateway however is typically something that only works with the carrier’s email.
If the 911 system can use one of the other A2P protocols - like via HTTP, you could use one of the may providers of such services. Someone does need to work out who pays.
A quick search turns up services such as this: http://www.urlsms.com/http-api/ (OK they appear to be in Bulgaria, at least that is where the site is hosted, but you get the idea.)
I was not trying to have emails sent to 2222222222@txt.att.net rerouted (that would just go out as normal and not work as normal), but something like having the person lets say open a google voice number of 333-333-3333 and entering google voice as another carrier, so it would email out to 333-333-3333@googlevoice.com (however google voice does not seem to support this - but that is the idea), a totally separate way of sending txting removed from an individual carrier. Hopefully one service that would be cross platform that everyone could use.
And although this is for a specific problem, it would be helpful to offer a alternative to being locked into the carriers way of email to texting.
The difficulty seems to be that the 911 system insists on using email - ie SMTP protocol underneath it all. (It probably does something desperately awful under the covers to make it work.) The commercial services to gateway to SMS require something like a RESTful HTTP interaction. Which is much more flexible and useful. Underneath the system simply POSTs an appropriately crafted HTTPS request to their server, and it SMS’s away.
Yes, you can do this using google voice and probably several other apps. Keep in mind that there are some caveats:
SMS works over normal phone service (ie no data coverage required). Almost any other service is ONLY going to work where there is data service, which could be dramatically different based on the location you’re talking about.
Many of those services (I know google voice for sure) will not support anything other than plain text being sent. With google voice, people would try to send me pictures and I wouldn’t get any notification or anything…they just would not come through.
At a previous employer, we used text messages to page our on-call people using e-mail via SMTP servers, and we had lots of people on AT&T, so this is something that works and is widely used. Something weird is going on, and I really doubt it is on AT&T’s end. I suspect it’s on the software side.
Are the folks with failing AT&T texts using an iPhone, by chance, or did they SWITCH from an iPhone to an Android phone? There have been issues where someone who switched did not get their imessage routing properly taken care of, and so would not get text messages sent to them via e-mail.
I used to write and operate mass notification software like that. One gotcha is to not send your messages as an email to a bunch of addresses all cced on the same email. That can trigger anti-spam filters at the carrier’s email to sms gateway.
And with modern “smart” self-learning email filters it may not be possible for the carrier’s techs to query the filter system to understand what it’s thinking or why. They may have very little influence over it’s “thought” processes. Ain’t AI great?
I have fought, and lost, this war a time or three over the years. My experience is not recent and doesn’t involve AT&T specifically, so take all this FWIW.
No changes AFAIK, just simply all using ATT don’t work. What is the plain text email to google voice format? It didn’t seem like they supported it. And yes I know it requires a data connection, as I said some form of delivery is better then none.
Hmm…maybe it doesn’t work the way I remembered. I thought you could do it via e-mail, but if that feature exists, it is well-hidden.
Could you try this? For each person you want to send the notification to that is on AT&T, have them use their regular e-mail, and hav them set up a rule that does this:
I suspect this will take care of the problem (though it is hinky).
Alternately, instead of adding all of the e-mails to the TO: line of your e-mail, have your exchange administrator create a group that contains all of the e-mail addresses necessary, and then send to that group instead of individual addresses.
Some debugging of the AT&T interface would seem to be in order.
Given others report that their AT&T relayed messages still works, it isn’t a simple loss of the feature. Have all the responders with the problem tested individually that their email to SMS fails? Would be good to check, and them work backwards. It could be something as simple as AT&T enacting some filtering rules on the gateway. The system might be flagging them as spam in some way. There could be something about the message itself that causes the system to drop it on the floor - length, bad character, formatting. Tickles some silly bug. All should be soluble with some tweaks to the dispatcher’s message sending system.