How to Configure a WCTP Carrier Transcript for Video:
Welcome to the video tutorial on how to configure a WCTP carrier in PageGate. In this tutorial, we’ll be going over how to use WCTP to send messages to cell phones, pagers and any other host that supports the WCTP protocol.
Before we get in to the configuration steps, let’s go over the protocol first. The Wireless Communication Transfer Protocol is an internet based protocol that can be used to send messages, if a host supports receiving the protocol. Most paging hosts, like American Messaging and SPOK/USA Mobility, have WCTP hosts and some cell phone carriers and SMS aggregators do as well. However, WCTP hosts that can message cell phones are usually part of either a message aggregator’s service or a carrier’s private enterprise messaging gateway and are not typically available for free, public use; which is another way of saying that some cell phone carriers (most notably Verizon and AT&T) have WCTP hosts but you have to register with their enterprise gateway to be given permission to use the host.
To message a WCTP host, there are three pieces of information you’ll need:
- The WCTP server address
- Port to connect to
- Authentication credentials (username and password)
Once you have that information, here’s how to configure the carrier.
First, open the PageGate Admin.
Next, right click Carriers and select ‘Add’.
Give the carrier a name.
Set the protocol to: WCTP
In the ‘Host’ field, enter the WCTP server address.
Set the port to the value required by the carrier. Most WCTP hosts will use port 80 but if you have a host that uses a custom port, you can click inside the port field, take the default value out and enter your custom value.
Set the “Max Chars” field to 160 for SMS and 240 for pages.
Click Apply.
If your WCTP host requires authentication, click on the + next to the carrier’s name and go to the Advanced sub-section.
Once there, enter the username and password in to the appropriate fields.
When finished, click Apply.
Now all that remains is to add a recipient to use the new carrier. To do that, right click on the Recipients heading and select ‘Add’.
Give the recipient a name.
Tie the recipient to your WCTP messaging carrier.
In the ID/PIN field, enter the cell phone number, pager ID or other identifying information.
You’ll notice that there’s a second Max Characters field here in the recipient as well. The carrier max characters value determines the number of characters that can be delivered in a single message and the recipient max characters value determines the number of characters you want to send to this person. So, if the recipient value is higher than the carrier value, the program will break up long messages in to multiple messages based on the carrier’s value.
For example, let’s say we’re sending SMS and that your carrier Max Chars value is 160. Let’s then also say that we’ve set the recipient value to 500. If we send a 300 character message, PageGate will break that up in to one 160 character message and one 140 character message.
When finished, click Apply.
This concludes the tutorial on how to configure a WCTP carrier in PageGate to send SMS and pages.
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