asterisk users - Oct 2008 - Emerging dilema? DID forwarding meets SMS

We have a number of DID's that do the standard VoIP tricks: ringing
multiple locations, findme-followme etc.  What is happening more and
more is that customers call those DID numbers, and draw the reasonable
conclusion that they are calling mobile numbers because they literally
can HEAR that the called party is on a mobile.  Consequently many of
those customers draw the conclusion that they can safely send SMS's to
those DID numbers.  Naturally the SMS messages disappear into the ether.
It occurrs to me that relaying SMS messages following dialplan logic may
become an increasingly common objective.

I say the SMS messages 'naturally' disappear but maybe I'm just
ignorant
to this topic because it has not been important to us in the past.  

Currently we routinely SEND SMS's from Asterisk triggered by other
dialplan events.  So far we've never needed to RELAY from one DID to
another.  Are terrestrial carriers even presented with SMS messages? Is
anyone using Asterisk to relay SMS messages?  

-Karl

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008, Karl Fife wrote:
> We have a number of DID's that do the standard VoIP tricks: ringing
> multiple locations, findme-followme etc.  What is happening more and
> more is that customers call those DID numbers, and draw the reasonable
> conclusion that they are calling mobile numbers because they literally
> can HEAR that the called party is on a mobile.  Consequently many of
> those customers draw the conclusion that they can safely send SMS's to
> those DID numbers.  Naturally the SMS messages disappear into the ether.
> It occurrs to me that relaying SMS messages following dialplan logic may
> become an increasingly common objective.
>
> I say the SMS messages 'naturally' disappear but maybe I'm just
ignorant
> to this topic because it has not been important to us in the past.
Er, they don't dissapear for me. I send a TXT to a landline, the phone 
rings and there is a text to speech robot which reads it out to you, or, 
you can register to not have that happen, and then it sends it to a device 
which decodes the tones and puts it on the phone display. (And by a 
similar method you can send TXTs from a landline phone that has the right 
facilities)

If you don't answer, it tries a few more times, or you can call the number 
and it'll speak it back to you.

Don't you have that facility?

Maybe it depends on country and telco.
> Currently we routinely SEND SMS's from Asterisk triggered by other
> dialplan events.  So far we've never needed to RELAY from one DID to
> another.  Are terrestrial carriers even presented with SMS messages? Is
> anyone using Asterisk to relay SMS messages?
The possibilities probably depend on the country you're in..

Gordon