January 4th, 2009, 4 Comments »
I stumbled upon this wikiHow article discussing how to send SMS messages from the Internet to phones and mobile devices. After successfully testing out the email method to my iPhone on Fido’s network, I figured I’d distill the bits specific to Canadian networks.
Send SMS Messages Using Email
If you know which cellular carrier the recipient is on, then you can just send an email to their number at a specific email address:
Bell Mobility & Solo Mobile - number@txt.bell.ca
Fido - number@fido.ca
Koodo Mobile - number@msg.koodomobile.com
MTS - number@text.mtsmobility.com
President’s Choice - number@txt.bell.ca
Rogers - number@pcs.rogers.com
Sasktel - number@sms.sasktel.com
Telus Mobility - number@msg.telus.com
Virgin Mobile - number@vmobile.ca
Send SMS Messages Using a Website
You can also send a message to a mobile recipient using the carrier’s website. I’ve linked to the specific pages on Canadian carriers’ sites (the ones I could find) below:
Bell Mobility
Solo Mobile
Fido
Koodo Mobile
MTS
Rogers
Sasktel
Telus Mobility
As it turns out, there’s an exhaustive list in Wikipedia as well. Other web-based options include Facebook apps (here’s one, though I’ve never tried it, so proceed at your own risk) or a service like Send2World.
Most of these solutions require that you know which network the message recipient is on. Here’s a naive question–does anybody know an easy way to answer that question on the fly?
4 Comments »
November 21st, 2007, 5 Comments »
Google recently announced its foray into the telecommunications space with Android, an operating system and software developer kit for mobile devices. I watched the video, which was fairly dry (and Sergey, you can afford a shirt with a collar), but I was missing the context and meaning of this announcement.
Over at Slate, Tim Wu has written a readable overview of what Android might mean to the staid telecoms industry in the US.
Nor is the problem of retailing Android phones trivial. Anyone with an Internet browser can use Google search or Gmail, but in the American mobile world the main barrier to market entry is reaching consumers. Today, more than 90 percent of Americans buy their wireless devices from their carriers. It is true, again, that Google has T-Mobile and Sprint provisionally on its side. But if only some outlets will sell a Gphone, fewer people will buy them.
Incidentally, I wasn’t super-interested in the subject matter, and abandoned it after a few episode, but I learned a lot about the early days of the telephone industry from Cory Doctorow’s reading of Bruce Sterling’s The Hacker Crackdown.
5 Comments »
March 20th, 2007, 8 Comments »
Earlier in the month, I bored the crap out of you with a Byzantine explanation of our phones-in-Malta situation:
We have three phone numbers we’d like to retain, Capulet’s land line plus our two cell phone numbers (currently with Fido). Ideally we’d like to use these numbers in Malta, but that’s probably not viable from a price perspective.
I called Fido today to explain our situation, and to see what they could do for me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but judging from the accents, all of Fido’s technical support seems to be in rural Quebec.
My contract with Fido is up in a couple of months, but Julie’s has at least a year left on it. Jacques (Ti-Paul? Marc?) explained that our only option was to ratchet the phones down to their minimum plan, and to use them for voice mail only (which is a satisfactory compromise, we can use a land line and calling cards in Malta).
Cost: $35 per phone per month, or about $420 for six months.
Our other option would be to buy our way out of Julie’s plan, and take the numbers (thank you, number portability) to a local VoIP provider. A colleague recommended PeopleLine. Frankly, I’ve been underwhelmed by my international calling experiences with VoIP, and I don’t like the idea that when our Internet access is down in rural Malta, so too is our phone service.
Cost: $200 to cancel Julie’s contract
I’m talking this over with Francois, and I must have said the magic words. I suspect they were “cancel”, “Vonage” and “number portability”. He shuttled me over to another department–a Super Secret Department Which Shall Not Be Named.
There, another French-Canadian gave me the offer I couldn’t refuse. Free number parking for six months, with pay-as-you-go pricing for usage. We’d have to pay a little something for voice mail:
Cost: $6 per phone per month, or about $72.
That’s what I’m talking about. Sign us up. Huzzah for free markets.
Now I need to investigate whether Fido has any voice mail notification services. Can I get an email or SMS (to another phone) when there’s a new voice mail message for a given number?
8 Comments »
