Frequently Asked Questions
How does sending SMS work? | Top
After you select the target country, enter the target number and your message, My-Cool-SMS will send your message to one of our allocators. An allocator is a service provider that routes messages through a number of networks until it reaches the handset. If you're sending a message from the United Kingdom to a handset on the Airtel Network in India, that message might pass through several networks before arriving at the Airtel Messaging Centre. Airtel is then responsible to deliver the message to the handset. All this happens very much the same way as emails are being sent over the internet.
How do delivery reports work? | Top
After your message is sent to an allocator, My-Cool-SMS has no control over it. The message will be labelled as pending until we receive a status report from the mobile network. The status of a message can for example be 'Delivered', 'Queued for Redelivery' or 'Delivery Failed'. We will then pass on a delivery report to you. Sometimes there can be a delay between when the message was delivered to the handset and you receiving the delivery report.
Some mobile operators in some countries do not send status reports. In that case My-Cool-SMS can only report that the message has been delivered to the mobile network (and trust the operator to deliver it to the handset). In some countries we know to expect a status report and this is what we wait for.
How does the Sender ID feature work? | Top
In all countries except the United States (and in some cases India and Taiwan) you can set your own mobile number or a text as sender id and it will appear on the target handset. If you didn't provide a sender id we will use My-Cool-SMS or a reply address provided by the local mobile network. In the United States the sender id will always be set by the local operator. This is due to legal regulations that require the operators to receive a text containing 'STOP' to block future texts (receiving SMS in the United States costs money).
What if the target handset is switched off? | Top
If the handset is out of network reach or switched off, the local mobile operator will queue the message for redelivery until the handset is in network reach again or the SMS times out without delivery (the deadlines for delivery vary from mobile network to mobile network).
I want to use SMS text messaging on my website or for my business. How can I do that? | Top
My-Cool-SMS was built on the idea that your company should have access to cutting edge SMS text messaging solutions to facilitate the operations of your business in a simple, secure and instant fashion. You can either use our Web 2.0 Developer API to start sending messages right away or contact us for quotes, rates or help setting up bulk messaging projects.
How does My-Cool-SMS assure quality? | Top
One or more of our allocators can deliver SMS to each country listed here. However some routes will work better than others. We monitor the delivery rate for every SMS and every allocator and continuously acquire data that helps us to automatically select the best possible route for every SMS. Once we know what type of message you are sending (Unicode or GSM), whether you requested sender id and where the message is going we will pick a route that best suits your SMS. The criteria for this are: a) The highest success rate, b) The hightes quality of special character handling, c) The quickest availability of a delivery report, and d) cheapest rate. (In that precise order).
Why are some messages limited to 70 characters? (What is the difference between Unicode and GSM?) | Top
Usually a message contains up to 160 characters of the so called GSM Alphabet. This alphabet contains all English, some European and a wide range of special characters. Using My-Cool-SMS you can send SMS in Unicode format that enables you to send messages in virtually every written language in the world (as long as the handset supports it). The drawback of this is that due to technical limitations of SMS the maximum number of characters in Unicode is 70. The My-Cool-SMS user interface will automacially set the maximum number of characters to 70 whenever unicode is detected. You can re-increase this number by removing all unicode characters from your message.
