Cingular

[firepara75]

Our Fire Department is now having problems sending messages to Cingular. We worked flawlessly for a while sending to @mobile.mycingular.com. For some reason now over the last couple of weeks the message fails to all cingular customers. Thought maybe the ATT merger had something to do with it. Tried sending to mmode.com. States successful but recipients never receive message. WCTP AND SNPP DOENS'T WORK EITHER. Any help would be appreciated.

[OzCom]

This is from a memo circulated to Cingular employees and agents:



Enterprise Messaging and the Consumer Email Gateway

There have been a number of recent cases where Enterprise customers have been using the Consumer
email gateway. We cannot support the use of the consumer email gateway for anything other than it's
intended use - individual, personal non-commercial peer to peer messaging. No application generated
messages of any kind are supported or allowed. Regardless of whether the customer has been able to
successfully use the consumer email gateway for their application – we cannot support use of the
consumer email gateway for enterprise messaging. Enterprise customers wishing to immediate, urgent,
reliable messages to their Cingular devices should use Enterprise Paging.
What is the Consumer email gateway?
Email messages sent to mobilenumber@mobile.att.net or mobilenumber@mmode.com and the web site
at http://www.mymmode.com/messagecenter and http://www.attwireless.com/messagecenter.
Why is the Consumer Email Gateway not supported for Enterprise use?
The consumer email gateway was designed, built and supported specifically and only for individuals to
send other individuals simple text messages. It was not designed to support the reliability and
performance necessary for enterprise applications. In addition, the feature/function set is specifically
tuned to consumer use. The consumer email gateway is subject to millions of SPAM messages a day
and extensive resources are employed to protect our customers from this flood of messages. As you
might expect, a corporate or government organization sending broadcast messages and urgent alerts to
their employees will look very much like SPAM messages and will likely be blocked or deleted.
Other carriers provide similar consumer email gateways and even free TAP gateways. How are
they different and how do we position our offerings against them?
1) The Cingular consumer email gateway is consistently ranked as one of the best performing
services of the major carriers as measured by Telephia. Even then, it does not provide the level
of performance and reliability necessary for enterprise applications. Consumer email gateways
typically fail to deliver between 0.2% and 2% of all messages. When you consider that these
gateways handle millions messages a day, that means tens of thousands of messages are lost
every day. It’s only a matter of time before an enterprise customer’s messages become part of
that statistic.
2) Broadcast messages sent from paging applications look very similar to SPAM, resulting in
messages being blocked or deleted.
3) All other US carriers charge to receive messages, subsidizing the cost of supporting their email
gateway infrastructure.
4) Many other carriers have explicit terms and conditions on their services stating that they are
provided for consumer use only and are not supported for enterprise use. We are currently
updating the T/C’s on our website and service to more explicitly address this point.
5) The only way to delivery immediate/urgent messages to mobile phones is to use enterprise grade
services like the Enterprise Paging offer.
What should we do when a customer uses the consumer email gateway in an unsupported fashion?
1) Inform them of the risks they are taking: They run the risk of their messages either not getting
through – being blocked by SPAM filters for example – or being delayed.
2) Present the Enterprise Messaging offers. In most cases Enterprise Paging will provide a simple,
quick and inexpensive solution to delivering their urgent/immediate notifications.
Here is comparison of the ways to deliver a message to Cingular Text Messaging capable devices:
Feature/Function Enterprise Paging Consumer Email Gateway
Positioning Pager replacement, Enterprise grade
performance/reliability,
urgent/immediate messaging, rich
messaging functionality
Offered free with all consumer text
messaging plans. Individual, personal
consumer use only. Not supported for
enterprise applications. Bulk messages
blocked by SPAM filters.
Message Length Up to 456 characters ~140 characters
Delivery Receipts Yes No
2 way Yes No
Reliability-
Performance
Enterprise Grade, service target: 99.2%
of messages delivered within 2 minutes
Consumer Grade – not supported for
enterprise applications.
Protocols
Supported
TAP
SNPP
WCTP
SMTP
SMTP
Application
Compatibility
Compatible with all standard enterprise
paging applications
Consumer email service - not supported
for enterprise applications. Bulk
messages blocked by SPAM filters.
Network
Connectivity
Internet
Dial-up
Internet
Pricing Unlimited receive messages feature
added to each end user account
Free consumer service - not supported
for enterprise applications.
Support Enterprise Grade support from National
Business Care
Unsupported
Cingular Wireless Enterprise Paging Offer:
With Enterprise Paging, Cingular subscribers can get rid of their pagers and have their mission critical
notifications sent to any Cingular Wireless text messaging-capable mobile device. With Cingular
Wireless Enterprise Paging, subscribers can still enjoy the rich paging functionality of their
organization’s existing paging application, with one less device to juggle.
Today, customers use Enterprise Paging for the notifications they rely on to operate their business.
Whether customers use paging for network outage notifications, trouble ticket dispatch or general
messaging, Enterprise Paging gets the job done.
Feature and Benefits
· Reduce cost: add a simple feature to Cingular and cancel expensive paging service
· Simple, easy to understand pager-like pricing model: flat rate MRC with unlimited pages, replies
billed at standard text messaging rates
- Eliminate expensive overage charges from paging services.
· Plug and Play with paging applications – just change paging operator address to Cingular Wireless
Services, no complicated provisioning process.
· Simplify mobile infrastructure management: consolidate devices, service providers
· Support for all standard paging protocols:
- TAP
- SNPP
- WCTP
- SMTP
· Enhanced messaging functionality:
- Long messages (up to 456 characters)
- Delivery receipts
- 2-way messaging
Billing
$9.99 MRC

 Provides access to Paging gateway

 Unlimited Mobile Terminate (MT) pages sent to device

 Replies & Mobile Originate (MO) messages charged at standard Text Messaging rates - $0.10
OOB rate. See consumer text messaging offers for current plans.

_________________
Aaron D. Osgood
Streamline Communications, LLC
* Authorized Notepage, Inc. Development Partner and Re-seller
TEL: 207-518-8455
AOsgood@streamline-solutions.net
Creators of AutoPage Spillman CAD interface for PageGate

[firepara75]

Does this mean the Cingular Carrier has to purchase enterprise paging for their personal phones? They have no problem recieving e-mail messages directed towards cingular's txt messaging.

[Tech Support]

It doesn't mean that the Cingular Carrier has to purchase the Enterprise Paging, it means that the recipients need to purchase the Enterprise Paging in order to receive program generated messages (such as those generated by NotePager Pro and PageGate).

[OzCom]

To clarify:

Cingular will NOT ACCEPT ANYT responsibility if someone does not get a message by using their "consumer gateway" - basically the phone's smtp email address. If the recipient chooses to ensure messaging, the recipient (Cingular phone customer) must pay the $9.99 MRC and subscribe to Enterprise Paging. Here's the worst thing: the vast majority of Cingular customer service people don't have a clue about how to provision enterprise messaging or even that it exists!!

_________________
Aaron D. Osgood
Streamline Communications, LLC
* Authorized Notepage, Inc. Development Partner and Re-seller
TEL: 207-518-8455
AOsgood@streamline-solutions.net
Creators of AutoPage Spillman CAD interface for PageGate

[firepara75]

Is there another way to send messages out with page gate that cingular will receive and deliver? Such as an e-mail format?

[OzCom]

In your original post you said "..We worked flawlessly for a while sending to @mobile.mycingular.com..", which indicates that you are already using SMTP (an Email protocol). To text message Cingular phones with PageGate, your alternatives are SMTP (which you already know is not reliable), TAP (sort of hit or miss with Cingular since most of their modems are deactivated), Enterprise Paging (which is very reliable since it uses SNPP, WCTP, TAP, or SMTP but comes with an added expense), or GSM. When you use GSM, you are actually tapping into the carrier class SMS system so it is very reliable and fast, but you then assume the expense of the MRC (monthly recurring charges) and data packet charges associated with the GSM capable device attached to your PageGate server. Trust me, I feel your pain - as a professional FireFighter/EMT-P (IAFF L740), I have to fight these battles for my department as well as my clients! You have to make the financial decision to stick it out with your carrier, pay them more for additional services (www.enterprisepaging.com), or seek alternative carriers.
Stay Safe

_________________
Aaron D. Osgood
Streamline Communications, LLC
* Authorized Notepage, Inc. Development Partner and Re-seller
TEL: 207-518-8455
AOsgood@streamline-solutions.net
Creators of AutoPage Spillman CAD interface for PageGate