Message life cycle

First delivery attempt

When SMS Submit receives a message it will be given the status "RELAYED" meaning the message is "en route". Delivery will immediately be attempted. If the first delivery attempts fails the message will remain in queue and a "buffered status" set indicating why the delivery attempt failed. One example is "ABSENT SUBSCRIBER" which indicates the phone was switched off or the subscriber is out of coverage.

Repeated attempts

Then repeated attempts will be made to deliver the message until the maximum message lifetime ("validity period") has been reached. The default value is 3 days (72 hours). After that the message status will be set to "EXPIRED" and no further attempts are made.

If the phone was switched off and then is switched back on the message will usually be delivered immediately when the phone registers in the network ("Location Update").

When a message has been delivered successfully the status will be set to "DELIVERED". This means the message has successfully been received and confirmed by the handset.

Statistics

In our webbased interface the message status for each message can be seen together with information about sender, recipient, relevant timestamps, "buffered status" and the first part of the message.

Delivery reports

When the message has reached its final status (success or failure) a delivery report will be generated which can be sent back to the sender.