Improve SMS System

[jonjmz]

• Vastly simplify gateway table
  • Just have the top 10 or so US carriers and maybe some Californian ones too.
  • Have only 1 row for each carrier (currently some carriers are listed twice because they seem to have multiple addresses, though it might be worth checking if some of them are obsolete).
  • For the address field, if that carrier has more than 1 address (for example AT&T seems to have mobile.att.net and txt.att.net), use a comma-separated list of all the addresses (for example: mobile.att.net,txt.att.net). After fetching data in the application, use php's explode() on the address field to get all the addresses to send the SMS to.
  • This is the alternative to looping through the multiple gateways that a user has, as it is currently implemented.
• Remove the "max 5 carriers" check in User->beforeSave() (after implementing the above)

[jacksonrayhamilton]

Top providers that we should include:

• Verizon Wireless
• AT&T
• Sprint
• T-Mobile
• MetroPCS
• Cricket Wireless
• U.S. Cellular
• Boost Mobile
• Virgin Mobile

Everything else can be dropped.

[jacksonrayhamilton]

Committed new database.sql file with only the above providers.

Also another thing to consider: To avoid the grossness of a comma-separated list, and assuming that we end up with some carriers having multiple MMS addresses:

We could create another table called carriers.

• Each carrier is only listed once ("Verizon Wireless", "AT&T", etc).
• carriers has the following fields: id, name.
• Users have a hasOne relationship with Carriers (rather than the hasAndBelongsToMany they have with Gateways currently).
• Carriers have a hasMany relationship with Gateways.
• Gateways have a belongsTo relationship with Carriers (they will no longer have their current hasAndBelongsToMany relationship with Users).
• The gateways table will be modified to remove the carrier field (obviously), and will receive a new field, carrier_id.

We would gain a simplified select menu and still have the ability for a single carrier name to route to multiple MMS addresses (if it becomes necessary for us to support that).

[jonjmz]

I like the way you suggested we restructure the tables. If we end up having to do that then that's the best way to go. However we may not need to, I sent every one of the remaining carriers an email to the phone number 7605555555 so i can see which would break before it tried to send a message. (5555555 doesn't exist in any area codes), I was able to conclude the following:

Name	Address	Response
AT&T	mobile.att.net	Failed to Send Email
AT&T	txt.att.net	Redirected to mx.txt.att.net / User not found
AT&T Enterprise Paging	page.att.net	info
AT&T Free2Go	mmode.com	info
AT&T Pocketnet PCS	dpcs.mobile.att.net	Failed to Send Email
Boost Mobile	myboostmobile.com	info
Cricket Wireless	sms.mycricket.com	Confirmed Working
Metro PCS	metropcs.sms.us	info
Metro PCS	mymetropcs.com	info
Sprint	cingularme.com	Redirected to mx.txt.att.net / User not found
Sprint	messaging.sprintpcs.com	info
Sprint	sprintpaging.com	info
T-Mobile	tmomail.net	Confirmed Working
T-Mobile	voicestream.net	Failed to Send Email
US Cellular	email.uscc.net	Error was not descriptive enough
US Cellular	smtp.uscc.net	info
US Cellular	uscc.textmsg.com	info
Verizon	vtext.com	info
Verizon Pagers	myairmail.com	Failed to Send Email
Verizon PCS	myvzw.com	info
Verizon PCS	vtext.com	info
Virgin Mobile	vmobl.com	info
Virgin Mobile	vxtras.com	info

Wherever it says info I got no response, it looks like they did consolidate their number (notice att redirects to the same host).

[jacksonrayhamilton]

Removed the vtext.com duplicate and also removed all gateways which "Failed to Send Email".

email.uscc.net is apparently the official address for US Cellular, according to their site. (See the header "Text Messaging E-Mail Address".) Because of this, we can assume that smtp.uscc.net and uscc.textmsg.com are not needed.

Also confirmed that vtext.com is the official address for Verizon, so myvzw.com is gone.

Confirmed that txt.att.net is the official address, source.

Also found another recently-updated list which has some addresses, which might be correct but I'd like to find official confirmation: Link.

[jacksonrayhamilton]

Updated original post. I decided that we should keep the receivesms flag for consistency's sake. My original fear was that having a "Receive SMS" option AND a "Select Carrier" option would be tedious, but I realized that that tediousness could be eliminated by the following design:

• When signing up, if the user selects a carrier then receivesms is automatically set to true in UsersController->add().
• If he doesn't select a carrier, it is automatically set to false.
• The setting can still be changed at /users/edit/.

I think a checkbox is a more obvious way of disabling something than by selecting "No Carrier". Removing contact information should not be the implied way of cutting off contact.

The only tediousness that remains is if the user sets his carrier later, but forgots to check off the "Receive SMS" checkmark. To avoid this we can position the checkmark right next to the selection box.

[jonjmz]

Yea, that sounds good, i'm currently working on the button being displayed while not subscribed/grayed out. If you working on it at the moment you can jump on the chat for faster communication.

[jacksonrayhamilton]

mmode.com confirmed deprecated. mymetropcs.com is confirmed on many sites. metropcs.sms.us also seems warmly-welcomed, but for the sake of getting 1 address for each, I'm cutting it. messaging.sprintpcs.com is confirmed on many sites, cutting sprintpaging.com. vmobl.com looks good, removing vxtras.com. And for completeness sake removing page.att.net.

Commits incoming.

[jacksonrayhamilton]

List has been reduced to one address per carrier, implementation more or less complete.