We offer a number of SMS services.
Many of the numbers we operate can be used to received text messages. These can be sent from most networks to your VoIP number and are then sent on to you. You can set either an email address or a URL (http:// or https://) for handling the inbound text. The simplest for most people is to set an email address. The text is emailed when it arrives.
HTTP posted inbound texts. If you set the text to be sent to a URL then we will issue an HTTP POST to the URL including sender, destination and message. We handle multipart messages automatically making one POST when all parts have arrived.
Unfortunately this only works with some of our VoIP numbers. Please feel free to send a test text.
We operate a keyword text service on the easy to remember number 01444666444. You can ask sales for a keyword and we will set it up if it is available. The message is then sent by HTTP POST (as above) with the addition on keyword which is removed from the start of message.
We operate an outbound text service that is available to all of our customers that have a VoIP number. To use this service you must have an outgoing password configured in the control pages for the VoIP number.
To send texts you need to issue an HTTP GET or POST to our outbound text gateway http://sms.aaisp.net.uk/sms.cgi with the following fields as if sent from a form. As the password is sent in plain text you may prefer to use https, but remember we use a CACert certificate which may give a warning if you have not loaded the root cert.
We support UTF-8 coding of the full GSM 7 bit character set (including £$¥èéùìòÇØøÅåΔ_ΦΓΛΩΠΨΣΘΞÆæÉÄÖÑܧäöñüà€¡¿). Whilst one message is normally up to 160 characters some characetrs are coded using two character spaces (€,[,\,],^,{,|,},~).
Delivery reports are sent as a HTTP GET to a URL you specify in report. Within this you can use %code and %dest to fill in the delivery code and destination number. The code is 1: delivery to handset, 2: Rejected from handset, 4: buffered in transit, 8: accepted by SMSC, 16: rejected by SMSC. We cannot guarantee delivery reports are sent or that the network does not send them before actual delivery (as some do). You can, instead, use an email address in report which cases a delivery report to be emailed to you.
The reply starts either ERR: and an error message or OK:
Example, using curl on linux: curl --silent --get --form username=01234567890 --form password=123456 --form detsination=01234567890 --form message="Hello world" http://sms.aaisp.net.uk/sms.cgi
Messages are charged at 7.5p inc VAT per message part.
Multipart incoming texts are handled automatically emailing or posting your complete message to you.
Multipart outbound texts are automatically converted in to several parts and sent. This is charged as multiple texts. xts are handled automatically emailing or posting your complete message to you. There is an option to restrict the number of parts to avoid accidential sending of very large texts.
Multipart outbound delivery reports are processed, sending a delivery report only if all parts arrived.
Your bill will show the number of texts sent and received per number. The optional XML version of your bill contains detailed information for each text sent or received, including the text content of the message (unless the private setting was used).
Multipart texts are itemised and billed as a single text but billed for the number of parts sent. The XML identifies the number of parts.
When you send a message it will be visible, and possibly logged, by the networks through which it travels as well as on the recipients phones. We also log the message you have sent and put the message on the bill (in the XML part). However, you can mark a message as private (see above). This will mean we do not log the message content on the bill or on the control pages. If you mark the message as private and give a value to the private tag then we will also encode the message in our logs using that value as a key. This means that we will only be able to see the message if you give us the key (useful if you want us to tell you what messages you sent at a later date). The exception is where we allow someone to send a message from an alpha tag instead of their normal number - in this case private just stops the content appearing on bills. This is because we need the message so as to be able to trace any abuse that is reported.
If you use this, then we recommend that you use https and also use an HTTP POST rather than GET as that will mean the key you have used does not appear in our web server logs either.
The originator field is used to set where the message is from. Normally this is only your phone number. Exceptions are:-