SMS text out of carrier blocked

[david derrenberger]

Has anyone seen where a SIM will stop sending to carriers outside it’s own network? we have several TMobile chips that stop sending to AT&T, Verizon and sprint phones after a couple days. TM said there was a problem that was ‘recent’ but we had seen the problem for months before we finally opened a support call with them. The SIMs are being used out of the phone number’s area code, but with unlimited texting, there should be no problem there.

[Bryon Davis]

Hi David,
I have not seen this problem before.

When it stops sending to outside carriers, it still sends across the TMobile carrier?

Are you able to get it working again after this happens? If so, how?

Regards,
Bryon

[david derrenberger]

Oddly enough, it does send in network. so even with the blocking, tmobile messages still go through to each other. one time a tech said they did see a block on a SIM, and removed it. that chip is still working across networks at the moment. However we have about 5 more that are still ‘blocked’. further calls to TM seem to get the run around like they are playing the ‘we don’t know why’ game. was just curious to see if anyone else had this problem. the sims are registered in our area code (719) but are being used/tested by a customer in 505 area code.
thanks

[Kevin]

how many SMS messages are you sending across the other network such as AT&T, Verizon or Sprint ??

it is known that the carrier will block SMS from other carrier if they detect a lot of SMS coming from the same number.

Kevin

[david derrenberger]

well it can be upwards of 100 an hour, so i could see that. we have unlimited txting on the accounts. TM has even said that shouldn’t be the problem. I have done lots of throughput testing and have sent 100’s and 100’s back and forth and had no problems from my own iSMS modem, even with one of the ‘bad’ chips in question (before being sent out). it just seems to be this one customer. Thats where i was thinking the out of area code thing. very perplexing. when/if we get this resolved with the carrier i will for sure update this thread.

[david derrenberger]

i should also say that the messages from the customer is across the various networks to many different numbers, not just one or 2.

[Steven McNeese]

Did you ever figure this out? We occasionally get a customer call saying this didn’t get a text message. We use AT&T and the customers
Have been on all carriers – even AT&T. The log shows the text went out successfully. If I run a test with the customer after the report the issue, it works fine. I have not been able to find a pattern.

I have also seen where certain customers don’t receive the message if their phone is off when we send it. This has been reported by one customer on the same carrier. It is strange because I can test the scenario on my phone with the same carrier and it works as expected. AT&T queues the message until the phone comes back online and then the SMS message is delivered.

I am interested to hear more about the cross carrier blocking if they see a lot of messages coming from the same number. We have 4 sims and send on average 30k messages a month using the 4 numbers.

Steve

[david derrenberger]

we never got a definite answer and nothing officially confirmed, but we were told by someone within one of the carriers that there was a limit on the number of messages a month. it was something like more than 1000 a week or 5000 a month triggers a throttle.. we gave our customer a 4 port iSMS modem so they could spread out their messages and so far so good. amazingly after we got the SIMs back from the customer and complained to the carrier they worked like nothing was wrong. so much for ‘unlimited’ texting.

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