SMS support: SMS forwarding to cell phone or email; text-to-landline

[adrienqa66]

Hello,

I think it would be great to be able to forward SMS/text messages sent to a VOIP number to a Verified cell phone number. With VOIP, I already have the capability of adding a number to my list for custom caller ID, etc. and I think it would be a terrific feature to be able to support SMS, even if the SMS message is sent to an account email or a cell phone.


There's also text-to-landline, which is a little different than my suggestion, but it would be good for VOIPO to support it, because traditional landlines do. This feature allows someone to text a landline number and then it is converted to voice so the landline user can hear the message.

Thank you!

[PCM2]

I'll second this. I'd much rather use my VoIPo line than my cell phone when I'm not out and about, but it's impossible to get people to juggle two different numbers when they want to call or SMS you. They always just end up calling the mobile.

One possible work-around might be to sign up for Google Voice; I believe that service can forward SMS text messages. But it would be awesome if VoIPo could build in this feature.

[VOIPoTim]

The main issue with this is that in order for us to handle SMS, the actual upstream provider that owns the phone number in question must assign SMS rights to us. We work with about a dozen providers and only 1 of them is willing to assign the SMS rights.

Most of the others don't want to give that up because they "may" develop their own systems for it in the future and the person with the rights is who is going to make money on the incoming messages.

We'd definitely be up for doing it, but it requires carrier cooperation and in telecom that's hard to get.

Same situation with Outgoing Caller ID Name. Some of our carriers won't give that right up either and want to charge crazy fees like $5/mo and $15 setup for them putting in the names to cover the administrative hassle of them handling the name entries/updates where if they would just assign the rights we could do it all and they'd never have to even touch them.