International Text Messaging

[Judy]

I am pretty new to this, and need some help with sending SMS internationally.

So far, I have not been able to successfully send a text message to my sister's mobile phone. She lives in UK, has a tri-band Nokia phone and her carrier is Vodafone (sp?).

My carrier is Cell One and I have a Nokia 6101 GSM and Cell One tells me I should be able to do this; I have sent 2 messages so far and she has not received them.

I have been putting 011 44 (her mobile #). What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks in advance.

[scotsboyuk]

@Judy

Use the format +44 or 0044 for texting your sister. Make sure you leave out the first zero of her mobile number after the '44' e.g. if your sister's number was 07123456789 then you would use either +447123456789 or 00447123456789.

[viewfly]

I think the main problem is, as scotsboyuk said, is to leave out the '0' after the country code, 44.

+44... will work or 011 44 ... also. However, 00 44 ... will not work calling from the states. '00' in the states gives you international directory assistance.

You can get the '+' on a motorola phone by holding down the '0' key. With Nokia phones, the '+' is entered bt repeatedly pressing the '*' key

[Judy]

Thanks guys, I have tried that, and I'm waiting to see if she got it...the phone # she gave me was just 10 digits; she had no "0" as the leading #.

[viewfly]

A dumb question, but I assume that you have international calling set up with your provider? With Cingular you need 'international calling' to dial outside the US, and 'international roaming' to place calls back to the US from, say, the UK.

[Judy]

Originally Posted by viewfly

A dumb question, but I assume that you have international calling set up with your provider? With Cingular you need 'international calling' to dial outside the US, and 'international roaming' to place calls back to the US from, say, the UK.

I'm assuming here...but when I called my provider to see if I was doing anything wrong, they told me I should be able to do this--they knew my plan, etc. They said I could even call internationally on this thing, but it'd cost a fortune (which is why we gab on AIM)

[scotsboyuk]

@viewfly

Thank you for the '00' tip.

@Judy

A British mobile number should be eleven digits long including the zero at the start of the number. All British mobile numbers begin '07'.

[Quint101]

Originally Posted by viewfly

A dumb question, but I assume that you have international calling set up with your provider? With Cingular you need 'international calling' to dial outside the US, and 'international roaming' to place calls back to the US from, say, the UK.

I thought int'l calling and intl TXTing were 2 different things. At Cingular their default pricing is .25/sent (.10 received) w/ no mention of a int'l calling pkg required; VZ is the same pricing. Maybe Cell1 is a different animal.


too bad VZ doesn't have the + function for call/txt

[Judy]

Originally Posted by scotsboyuk

@viewfly

Thank you for the '00' tip.

@Judy

A British mobile number should be eleven digits long including the zero at the start of the number. All British mobile numbers begin '07'.

She must have known that and left off the "0" and the # did begin with a "7". She just gave me 781XXXXXXX.

[scotsboyuk]

@Judy

Good show! It should just be as simple as popping a +44 in front of the 7, hopefully you get it working.

[Bugwart]

The "+" should put the international prefix in front of the country code. This makes it simple to enter a single phone number without worrying about the prefix of the country where you are located. This the prefix varies by country.

The problem is that some phones do this and some do not.

[Judy]

I'd like to thank everyone here for all their help with this.

Still can't send or receive, but FINALLY got to the bottom of it. To make a long story short, each service provider was playing the "blame game" on each others' service being the culprit. My sister sent and subsequently received a reply from a friend's daughter in New Jersey, therefore we narrowed it down to my service provider (who kept telling me all the long that it "could be done"). Anyway, I got tired of the run around and finally sent a communication to Cell One in writing that I was *extremely* dissatisfied with all of this, and then got the truth...they are experiencing problems (just Dobson) with international texting being sent/received within this network.

Just figured I'd let you guys know the final outcome of all this.

Oh, BTW, they claim they don't have any ETA on this problem.

[Bugwart]

Originally Posted by Judy

I'd like to thank everyone here for all their help with this...

...Oh, BTW, they claim they don't have any ETA on this problem.

I am glad that you have a reason, if not a solution.

This same problem pops up from time to time (with the same reason.) For a service provider, setting up local texting is somewhat different than setting up international texting. When Cellcom (IS) first switched to GSM, it was not possible to send international text messages either. The CS rep with whom I spoke told me that she could see my outgoing messages waiting in the queu, but they would not go any further. Cellcom has solved the problem, and your provider can also do it.