SMS status explained

SMS delivery reports are acknowledgements from the handsets that the message has been received by the phone. (note - this is not the same as being *READ* by the recipient). Note - also - some phones may receive the message, but choose not to display it depending on the settings on the phone.

The usual outcomes are :

1) Sending -- means message has been sent to the mobile networks - ie it has left the aql platform and is now in the hands of the mobile network

2) Buffered -- means message is on the network and awaiting delivery to the handset. Buffered will usually appear when there is either network or handset congestion - for example:

- the network provider is busy
- the network is waiting for delivery report from the handset
- the handset's memory is full
- the handset is switched off
- the network is waiting for the handset to accept the message.
- bad reception or network coverage
- out of service area
- handset is not registered properly to a mast
- The buffer memory (temporary holding memory) of the handset is corrupted

3) Delivered to handset - handset has acknowledged the message. Note - the time of the delivery report = time for the message to be sent, PLUS the time for the delivery report to get back to aql. This means that eg, a delivery report taking 10 seconds means the message was probably delivered in about 5 seconds.

4) Rejected message not delivered. This status could be caused by bad reception or out of service area. A few phone networks do reject sms if the phone is unreachable without further attempts. If you are using non-privileged route such as standard or economy route, "Failed" status will be returned if the mobile network is too busy processing data via privileged route. We would strongly suggest customer to route via our premium uk or global route because more often than not unprivileged-route ended up as failed.

5) Binary data not shown status is due to the fact the message is not text message. It could be a wap-push message, mms message, ringtones, images, vcard, etc.

The other reason is that the message is a concatenated message. When you send concatenated messages, the messages are split up into different packets. This packet requires a binary header to identify which packet comes before the other, time of sending, id, etc, etc. Therefore the packet has to be bundled up into binary format and can not be shown by the website.

6) Invalid Number means that the destination number is not a valid number.

More help available from technicians via our online support system.