SMS API

This page contains technical details and as such may be quite long and hard to follow. If you cannot find the details you require please feel free to contact support who can explain things for you. You will also find many other customers on irc who can help with queries. Feel free to send us feedback if you think there are any errors in this page.

Inbound

This is where text messages are sent to us to delivery to our customers. We provide VoIP numbers in all UK area codes and some special services (e.g. 0800). However, at present, only a few of the numbers starting 01 and 02 can receive texts properly from most networks. All of our 01, 02 and 03 numbers can receive texts from Three properly. Attempts to send texts to other geographic numbers (i.e. those starting 01 and 02) cause a call to be made and the text read out by an automated system.

Where texts can be received properly, and this includes all cases where A&A customers send texts through us, the text will be sent on to you by your choice of means. This is based on the incoming text setting on the control pages for your number.

Email

If you simply put in an email address, then the text is emailed to you. Additional email headers may be present to specify fields such as User Data Header if present, etc. This is also the default if you do not put any incoming text handling in to the control pages, but you have an email address defined for the number.

SIP2SIM

If you include a 19 digit string starting 89 which is the SIM ICCID for one of your SIP2SIM cards then the text will be passed to the SIM directly as a normal text. SIP2SIM charges apply for the SIP2SIM side as an incoming text.

HTTP

If you put an entry starting http:// or https:// then we will attempt to send the text to you using HTTP (or HTTPS). If the URL ends with a ? or & then an HTTP GET is done with a set of form fields (i.e. name=value) containing information about the text. If the URL does not, then an HTTP POST is done using URL encoded form data.

The fields posted are as follows, but additional fields may be added from time to time.

SMS API Fields

username	This is the phone number as shown on the control pages for your VoIP number in full international format with no spaces.
password	The corresponding outgoing password for the username as set in the control pages for your VoIP number.
da	This is the number to which the message is to be sent and should be a full international format number (however, national format is also accepted). This may be a SIP2SIM ICCID to send direct to a SIM.
ud	This is the message to send, encoded in UTF-8.
limit	Set this to limit the number of parts that the message may be sent in.
costcentre	Optional, up to 10 characters, code that is included in the bill XML data.
private	Marks the message as private, see below
oa	Sets the sending number (see below). Normally not needed as your username is used.
udh	Hex UDH header, see below.
srr	Email address or URL for delivery report, see below

You will note that we have tried to use field names to match GSM 03.40 values. Other values may be included. For legacy reasons you can prefix the URL specified with a * to also send the older field names of timestamp, originator, destination, message.

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 characters are coded using two characters using an ESC prefix in the 7 bit alphabet (€,[,\,],^,{,|,},~). The message will be coded as 7, 8 or 16 bit depending on what you include in the text, and this will impact the number of message parts that may be sent. If you include the invalid UTF-8 sequence 0xC0 0x80, then that includes a null in the message. If you include any unicode characters beyond U+0xFFFF then UTF-16 coding is used and sending of text in is UCS2 format. Not all interconnects or devices understand UTF-16 format.

The response text starts either ERR: and an error message or OK:

Example, using curl on linux:

curl --silent --get --form-string username=01234567890 --form-string password=123456 --form-string da=01234567890 --form-string ud="Hello world" https://sms.aa.net.uk/sms.cgi