Coming in July...

[VOIPoTim]

For me it isn't shortcodes - it's signing up for services such as flight notifications or Twitter, or Amazon shipment tracking, etc. Sometimes the sites will have a pulldown list of carriers, but many other times they just ask for the number. I know that if I put in a Google Voice number, I never get the message from these services.

Most likely they would be using shortcodes to send the notifications. This is kind of simplistic explanation but the reason I said that is that carriers are pretty restrictive in that SMS on regular phone numbers is to be used only for "person to person" communication and any kind of automated notifications have to be routed through a shortcode gateway which are more heavily controlled. This is basically to prevent SPAM/abuse as all the shortcodes have a clearcut opt out process to stop receiving messages (replying with STOP). So anything not send by a human is supposed to either use a shortcode gateway or e-mail gateway.

[mikeb]

Hi,

I'm really looking forward to the new vPanel. Thank you!

Will the texting service include an SMS gateway that will allow us to send an email to our Voipo number (4445551212@voipo.com) that is forwarded as a text message to the Voipo SMS?

[VOIPoTim]

Hi,

I'm really looking forward to the new vPanel. Thank you!

Will the texting service include an SMS gateway that will allow us to send an email to our Voipo number (4445551212@voipo.com) that is forwarded as a text message to the Voipo SMS?

Right now the sending is all web-based, but we're looking into an e-mail gateway. One thing that complicates it is that that would make it easier for people to try to use it for automated/commercial messages and the wireless industry is super strict about SMS on regular numbers only being person to person with 0 tolerance for automated stuff, so we'd have to built in some kind of protection to prevent that.

For incoming messages, they will show in the control panel and can also be either forwarded to an e-mail or on to another number as an SMS (such as forwarding messages sent to the VOIPo number on to a cell phone).