Mobile Phone Number Format

All mobile phone numbers should be a valid with country code for global messaging with or without country code for domestic platform. For eg: +919xxxxxxxxx, 918xxxxxxxxx, 7xxxxxxxxx.

Sender ID

All text messages carry a sender ID. When you send a text message through API, you could use any of the approved sender IDs for your account. You can request for a new sender ID right from your SMS application.

Creating a Sender ID (Alphabetic Originator)

One can create the sender ID using company name, or anything else. This sender ID will be shown as SMS sender name to the recipients rather than just a phone number in sender field. This alphabetic originator, or sender ID, can contain characters from a-z, A-Z. Other characters may cause message delivery to be failed. Every country has their own restricted variations for defining sender IDs.

Supported Character Sets

GSM 03.38 Encoding

The standard SMS mobile-phone character set is used universally to send text messages. The standard character set allows few of the Roman alphabet and the most common accented forms, certain special characters, and few Greek alphabets that sum up to 160 characters. It includes the following characters:

@ £ \ $ ¥ è é ù ì ò Ç \ n Ø ø \ r Å å ? _ F " ? O ? ? S T ? Æ æ ß É ! \ " # ¤ % & ' ( ) * + , - ../ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? ¡ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ? Ö Ñ Ü § ¿ a b c d e f g h I j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ö ñ ü à ä Ä { } \ ~ [ ] |

Note: All extended characters will take two characters to send.

Extended characters are:

£ ¥ è é ù ì ò Ç Ø ø Å å Δ Φ Γ Λ Ω Π Ψ Σ Θ Ξ Æ æ ß É ¤ ¡ Ä Ö Ñ Ü § ¿ ä ö ñ ü à

Also, extended character like € takes three characters to send.

Unicode

While using non-GSM, 03.38 characters SMS transmits as a Unicode message. The Unicode character support provides the ability to send a message in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, etc.

If the message to be transmitted is in Unicode format, then entire message has to be converted into Unicode format. Also, Unicode transmission will charge double the credits, including normal English SMS sent in Unicode mode.

Message Length - Multipart Messages

Standard GSM 03.38 Character Set

Single text messages are limited to 160 characters, including spaces. The maximum length of two-part or three-part multipart text messages is 306 (2 x 153) and 459 (3 x 153) characters, respectively. One can send up to 1000 characters as multipart message which will be split into 7 messages internally. This refers only to messages that contain the standard GSM 03.38-character set. Each multipart text message is limited to 153 characters rather than 160 due to the need for user-data headers (UDHs) information. Mobile phones use UDH information to enable them to link long messages together so that they appear as single SMS messages in recipient’s phone inbox.

Unicode Characters

Using Unicode, for languages such as Hindi, restricts your message to a maximum of 70 characters per SMS. You can, however, send longer text messages, with our system splitting them into two or at the three separate text messages. The maximum lengths of two-part and three-part multipart Unicode text messages are 134 (2 x 67) and 201 (3 x 67) characters, respectively. You could send up to 500 characters as multipart message which will be split into 8 messages internally.

Delivery URL

DLRURL is basically the URL where you can get the delivery reports if requested via API. To request such delivery reports, you need to pass "DLRURL" parameter in the API URL.

Custom Flags in DLRURL

We have few custom flags supported in DLR URL in order to get the additional values. In case one wants to build the URL in above format, the following flags can be used.

Sample DLRURL

http%3A%2F%2Fdomain.net%2Freceive%3Fsent%3D%7Bsent%7D%26delivered%3D%7Bdelivered%7D%26custom%3D%7Bcustom%7D%26sid%3D%7Bsid%7D%26status%3D%7Bstatus%7D%26reference%3D%7Breference%7D%26custom1%3D%7Bcustom1%7D%26custom2%3D%7Bcustom2%7D%26credits%3D%7Bcredits%7D%0A

Without Encode

http://domain.net/receive?sent={sent}&delivered={delivered}&custom={custom}&sid={sid}&status={status}&reference={reference}&custom1={custom1}&custom2={custom2}&credits={credits}