Best way to send SMS messages

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com> said:
> Any thoughts on the optimal solution? It would be useful to be able to send 
> a standard SMS like a human text, rather than one of those eMail to SMS 
> gateways which send all the headers and such.

I have a Multi-Tech GSM modem attached via USB.  I use gnokii-smsd,
which uses a database (MySQL in my case) to queue inbound and outbound
messages.  I have a simple perl script that inserts a message into the
outbound table, and gnokii-smsd sends it (we use this with Nagios for
alerting).

We have an AT&T contract at work, so we ordered another line (and phone
and SIM) with unlimited text messaging.  You have to put the SIM card
into a phone to activate it with AT&T (they don't send them out ready to
use), and then you just stick the SIM card in the modem.  I think with
T-Mobile (the other GSM provider in the US), you can get just a SIM (no
phone) and it will be ready to use when you get it.

I believe that Multi-Tech also has CDMA phones that can be used with
either Sprint or Verizon, but I'm not sure exactly how that works (how
you get them activated and such).

I had to make some changes to the kernel ti_usb_3410_5052 module to load
different firmware for the Multi-Tech modem, but it should work out of
the box with kernel 2.6.29 and newer (my changes went upstream in that
version).

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.