The company I work for needs to send page messages, sms, email to some peoples cell phones when an alarm is triggered. Currently a customer of ours uses nextel messaging. Usually the system works good with a delay of 30 seconds to 2-3 minutes however lately they have been coming in 2-12 hours after the alarms are triggered. This is unacceptable and nextel has been unable to fix it. Does anyone know of 3rd party sms systems or paging services that may be faster or more reliable?

5/25/2006 3:16:15 PM

as in, compatible with his nextel service? or you want to buy him a little 2-way text pager?

[Edited on May 25, 2006 at 4:43 PM. Reason : .]

5/25/2006 4:43:15 PM

SMS thru the cell provider will always suck. Theres no guarantee of speed and theres no way to track messages. You can try switching cell providers, but basic SMS sent thru their system means you have no control. Its just like sending an email. Once its off your network and on to theirs, there isn't anything you can do.

So you have some options.

If you can use devices with actual mail clients (windows mobile, blackberry, etc...) they can connect to your own servers to get their messages.

Or if you want straight up paging you can buy paging software. The company i work for sends pages from our system to doctors who are our clients. Since these usually involve patients, they need to get there and they need to get there on time.

We use a product called HipLink. It runs on windows on a normal pc. You add some modems to the pc, set them up in hiplink, and you're ready to go. HipLink sends directly to the paging company's own modems and it gets back status messages. So you know that it went thru or if it failed. They also have an excellent set of APIs so you can send and track pages.

The downside to this, is that you need to setup paging companies manually. This means you sometimes have to call the paging company and get the modem number, baud rate, etc... for a doctors pager. Some of the large pager companies are very good and have universal paging numbers. Others, esepecially smaller, regional companies, have specifc modems you'd need to send to based on the pager number. It can become a pain in the ass.

A paging system is probably not really what you need, but i figured it was worth mentioning. If the nexttel phone the guy has, has an POP3/IMAP client you might just set him up on your email server. So any alerts would go to his box, and he'd have his phone check the box every so often.

5/25/2006 6:07:57 PM

I used to argue with my ex over Nextel text messaging that shit was gay because like a day or two later after we got straight I would get some nasty ass message she sent or vice versa.

5/25/2006 9:02:04 PM