> D d SMS.tbTEXT ¬z?˜¯Km š1Title: Send SMS Messages for Free on the iPhone
Blurb: Frustrated with having to pay for SMS messages on his iPhone - both sent and received - Chris Pepper uncovers the various alternatives to sending text messages.
By Chris Pepper
When Apple and AT&T announced that iPhone 3G service plans would not include SMS (Short Message Service) text messages with the base plans, and SMS messages would be billed for either individually or in prepaid blocks, I was annoyed, along with pretty much everybody else. To make the highway robbery even more egregious, AT&T (like many other cellular carriers) now charges SMS recipients, as well as senders.
That's why I was delighted when Jeff Carlson pointed out that AIM on the iPhone could send SMS messages for free (see "Send SMS for Free via AIM on iPhone," 2008-07-13). Unfortunately, the iPhone AIM app is lousy. It's unstable, and messages I send from it are rarely received.
However, several alternatives exist for both phones and computers. Note that these vary by cellular carrier - I concentrate here on AT&T options that work in the United States; your mileage may vary elsewhere.
Method 0: Plain SMS -- You can send SMS from a phone. 500 SMS messages are included "free" with the standard AT&T data plan for the original (EDGE) iPhone. For the new iPhone 3G, the base data plan doesn't include any SMS messages for free. You can pay $5 per month for 200 messages, $15 for 1,500 messages, or $20 for an unlimited number of messages. Or, if you don't plan on sending and receiving more than 25 SMS messages in a month, you can pay $0.20 per message by not signing up for any plan. Highway robbery, I tell you.
Method 1: AIM to SMS Gateways -- For computer users, Jeff's method is fine - AOL's AIM-to-SMS gateway works consistently. My issues were with the iPhone AIM client. On the Mac, iChat and AOL's Mac client are reliable, and another iPhone client using AOL's IM service would presumably have been fine. But I barely use instant messaging since I started using Twitter, so I have not looked for alternative clients.
Method 2: Email-to-SMS Gateways -- My favorite way to send email to iPhone-using friends is to send email from either my Mac or my iPhone to their 10-digit cellular number @txt.att.net. txt.att.net is AT&T's email-to-SMS gateway; it generates an SMS message that looks something like an email message, with minimal 'FRM' & 'SUBJ' headers adapted from the original message, and forwards that as an SMS message to the specified 10-digit cell phone number. Longer email messages are broken into multiple SMS messages. Now that I know that recipients pay for incoming SMS messages, I'll probably use this approach less and avoid long messages that would be fragmented and thus cost the recipient two or three times as much.
Email-generated SMS messages are easy to recognize - they come from strange-looking phone numbers, like "1 (010) 100-010" for the 10th message I received from the gateway. There's no charge for sending email to an SMS gateway, although remember that many cellular carriers charge for receipt of SMS messages (including spam!). Unfortunately, these gateways are generally specific to individual carriers - AT&T's gateway works only for AT&T subscribers. Teleflip used to offer such a multi-carrier service, but the company has gone bankrupt. Notepage offers a long list of gateways. If you're not sure which gateway to use, try sending an SMS message from your phone to your email address (which will likely entail an SMS charge to the cellular account) - the email should show a valid return address at the appropriate SMS gateway.
Method 3: SMS Web Pages -- Many cellular carriers, including Verizon Wireless and Sprint, offer public Web pages for sending SMS messages to their subscribers. In contrast, AT&T's page is available only to logged-in AT&T customers, although hopefully that means it can reach any SMS number. I am not aware of a Web page which enables non-AT&T subscribers to send text messages to AT&T subscribers.
Method 4: SMS Applications & Widgets -- There are a variety of applications and Dashboard widgets that you can use on a full-fledged computer to send SMS messages. Many of these charge the sender, although they appear to operate across cellular carriers. I suspect they use commercial gateways which have the same access to cellular providers as other providers, but nobody except AOL appears to do this for free.
MMS: Multimedia Messaging Service -- In addition to SMS for short text messages, MMS enables mobile phone users to send one another pictures and short videos. The iPhone lacks MMS support, although Mail is perfectly suitable for sending attachments to an MMS gateway, if you'd like to reach a non-iPhone cell phone that does support MMS. Messages sent to iPhone cellular numbers via @mms.att.net are silently dropped.
SMS messaging may not be used in the United States to the extent it is elsewhere in the world (perhaps in part due to the usurious rates), but I hope these resources make it a bit easier - and cheaper - to stay in touch with friends and family.