Overview

The Skyetel Network can enable your phone numbers for SMS and MMS. This feature allows you to send and receive a SMS or MMS from/to mobile phone networks (like Verizon or T-Mobile). 

Getting Started

SMS Enablement Requires the "State" of a number to be Healthy

Our network does the legwork to prepare a number for SMS enablement as soon as it's phone number state becomes "Healthy". This insures that we do not accidentally prepare a number for SMS prior to it actually being on our network. You can toggle the SMS & MMS enablement from within our portal in the phone number options menu:

You will be presented with four options:

E-mail

This method allows an incoming SMS or MMS to be converted to an email and sent to a specified address in our portal.

Phone Number

This method allows an incoming SMS or MMS to be forwarded to another phone number (generally a mobile phone)

Callback URL (POST or GET)

This method allows you to receive the SMS or MMS via a call from our API. Messages are sent to your provided callback URL with a JSON body that matches the fields required for sending an SMS or MMS shown below. You can expect at least to, from, and text fields.

Postcards for Slack

Postcards for Slack is a fully managed integration between Skyetel's SMS/MMS and Slack. By using this product, you are able to send and receive SMS and MMS from your Skyetel phone numbers via Slack.

SMS + MMS Logs

From our Portal, you can see the history of any sent or received SMS/MMS from our network:

Segments

A Segment is the unit count used for billing - so while you may send only one SMS or MMS, each one may contain more than one segment. This happens when you send SMS/MMS messages that are larger than 140 bytes. Emojis, URLs, Images, or Unicode text all use a lot of space in the content body of your SMS, and thus increase your segment count.

You can use this tool to calculate what your segment count will be for your SMS or MMS: http://chadselph.github.io/smssplit/

Limitations to SMS & MMS

While our network is able to enable and process SMS and MMS for almost all of our numbers, there are a few limitations to be aware of:

Toll Free Numbers

Sending and Receiving of SMS/MMS messages via Toll Free numbers is not currently supported.

Outbound SMS/MMS

Everyone using US phone numbers to send SMS and MMS must complete SMS Registration prior to attempting outbound SMS/MMS.

This does not presently apply to Canadian phone numbers.

Numbers must be route-able and voice enabled 

If your phone number is never assigned to an endpoint group or never receives phone calls, the SMS enablement may be auto-disabled to prevent spam. This does not happen on ported-in numbers, only numbers purchased from our network inventory and only when they are not routed after purchase.

SMS Enablement Requires the "State" of a number to be Healthy

Our network does the legwork to prepare a number for SMS enablement as soon as it it's phone number state becomes "Healthy". This insures that we do not accidentally prepare a number for SMS prior to it actually being on our network. 

SMS Enablement can take up to 24 hours

While most SMS enablements will be instant, there are edge cases where some phone numbers take longer than others to enable. 

Short Code SMS is supported

Our network is able to receive short code sms messages

Do not use this service with 2FA numbers

Most third party 2FA providers (Microsoft, Google, Your Bank, etc) do not support using 2FA on VoIP numbers. As such, they will not send an SMS to Skyetel even though they act like they are.

1 Outbound SMS/MMS per Second

All Skyetel numbers are limited to 1 SMS or MMS per second

Delivered means Delivered to Network, not subscriber

In our SMS/MMS Logs you will see "Delivered" when Skyetel delivers the SMS/MMS to the network of the party you are trying to reach, not to the actual handset. The wireless carriers do not share delivery statistics or delivery confirmation by handsets on local 10 digit numbers. 

The only exception to this is Toll Free numbers - when you see "Delivered" when you send an outbound SMS from a Skyetel Toll Free number, it means that the actual handset confirmed delivery to our network. 

SMTP Settings

There are no default defined SMTP settings for your account. This is required for email delivery of the SMS. If you do not specify SMTP settings in our portal, we will not be able to deliver SMS via email.
You can set this up by logging into your Skyetel Portal and clicking the Settings gears in the top Right ​ and then defining your SMTP parameters:

Postcards

Postcards is a UI for the Skyetel SMS & MMS application that we released as an open-source project. You can read all about that here:

https://bitbucket.org/skyetel/postcards-installer

 

Postcards for Slack

Postcards for Slack is a fully managed integration between Skyetel's SMS/MMS and Slack. By using this product, you are able to send and receive SMS and MMS from your Skyetel phone numbers via Slack.

You can read all about that at this link.

 

Textable

If you are a Textable user, they have published a Skyetel SMS configuration guide here:

https://www.textable.co/docs/skyetel-setup-guide/