The SaferMobile projects plans on releasing simple, usable software tools that allow mobile phones to be used as monitors and sensors on their networks to help developers, organizations, and everyday users, monitor network performance, and proactively detect filtering and censorship.
Our first trial run with SMSTester was completed in April 2011. The results are written up here: http://mobileactive.org/smstester-monitoring-sms-delivery-and-keyword-filtering-possibly
We are currently updating the SMSTester app to fix known issues before more widely promoting the tool. We would welcome allies to comment and run SMSTester in a second controlled run of tests. Please send us an email if you are interested.
This code was written to target Android 2.2, but should generally work on any modern version of Android, and any SMS-capable device (aka not Wifi-only tablets or players).
The SMSTester app enables two Android devices to automatically send a configured list of messages to one another, and have the send and receive times of those messages, along with data like Cell Provider ID, Location Area Code, and other mobile network information, logged into easily parseable text files.
The data from the 'send' side is included in the message itself, such that it the 'receive' side can parse, analyze and display the results without needing data from the 'send' side. Each message is coded with a unique GUID as well, so that data sets from both sides can be later combined if necessary.
The output of the data is stored on the device SDCard in comma seperated value (CSV) format, which makes it easy to import and parse in any office spreadsheet application.