How to Take the Spin Out of Wholesale Application (Computer) to Phone SMS in the Australian Market

The Australian wholesale application to phone SMS messaging market (SMS Routing) has become so confusing.

Choosing the right supplier has virtually become a game of chance, with many companies changing suppliers two or three times to get the service they require.

With cost offerings varying from 3.7 cents to 16 cents per message, how can you stack the odds in your favour and get the right service at the right price, the first time?

SMS Routing by Design, not Chance

SMS Messaging wholesalers either route their messages via overseas carriers back to Australia (international routing) or via direct local connection routing with Australia’s 3 major Telecommunications providers.

Some hybridise the two routing options to leverage the best of price, service performance and features.

Most wholesalers use a sliding pricing scale based on monthly volume. For low volume messaging, pricing can still vary from 6 to 16 cents per message.

Local SMS Routing

Local SMS routing is where messages are delivered via a direction connection each Carriers SMSC.

Local routes provide the premium delivery performance but come at premium price.

Service delivery issues include down-time due to routine maintenance on wholesale connection systems and the occasional break-down. Wholesale SMS providers can manage these issues if they have capacity to re-route messaging when necessary.

International SMS Routing

International SMS routing is where Phone to Phone messaging agreements between international carriers are used to send application to phone messages. So a message is via an international carrier back into the Australia carriers.

Wholesalers offer a range of overseas routing options sourced from international SMS consolidators with varying features, performance and costs.

Service performance stretches from “high quality robust” to “cheap and nasty” and (of course) price almost always equates to performance.

Check out this comparison table:

International SMS Routing Comparison table

How’s Your Form?

Take no chances.

Ask any prospective wholesale SMS Provider:

How long have you been in this business?
Is redundancy built into your system and how?. A messaging gateway can be built in as little as a few man weeks but a high availability system that is scalable takes many man years to build.
Where does my data get stored? And what is the risk of it becoming public?
Are there any restrictions on message throughput?
What routing options do you offer for redundancy and performance management?
What percentage of messages to active numbers get delivered?
What is the average message delivery time?
In the past, how have you offered system support or responded to queries and where is your support team?
Is it easy to integrate and what integration support do you provide?
What features are offered with the service?

A Final Word

Be cautious about provider claims of high delivery performance. Unless you’re feeling lucky, always test the service out with a decent sample of messages across a broad range of phones on all the local networks.