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Title: Which networks support shortcodes? Post by: al_tater on May 28, 2020, 03:44:52 PM Hi folks,
My wife works for a charity who offers a text message information service, which you sign up to by sending a sms message to a 5 digit number for free. They're finding that some people's phones don't allow sending to these shortcodes, so can't sign up. I assume this is because the networks block premium services (even though it's free in this case). Does anyone know which networks do and don't support the shortcodes? I'd like to know what percentage of their users we can expect to have issues. Thanks in advance, Al Title: Re: Which networks support shortcodes? Post by: davegr on May 28, 2020, 04:56:49 PM Hi Al
Welcome to the forum. To the best of my knowledge (I am not a customer of their's), Plusnet doesn't allow texting to short codes. I have seen this mentioned by many Plusnet customers on various forums. I don't recall any customer of any other network ever mentioning the same, though I suspect that some other MVNO's will not allow texting to short codes either. It's become a little more interesting since OfCom implemented the new number porting process, which involves sending texts to short codes! All networks must support the short codes for number portability (65075, 75075, 85075), so you'd think that would push Plusnet (and any other applicable network) into supporting short codes in general. I have no idea whether it has changed anything though. Another issue you will face is that some phones (I'm thinking Android, mostly) will pop up a warning when texting short codes, suggesting that they could be quite costly. This could put some people off. I'm sure there are many users on different networks on this forum who can confirm for their network but in general you should expect ALL the main networks to support short codes and also most of the bigger MVNO's (e.g Tesco Mobile, Virgin Mobile). I hope that helps. Dave Title: Re: Which networks support shortcodes? Post by: al_tater on May 29, 2020, 09:42:28 AM Thanks Dave,
That's really useful info. Four colleagues tested the service and it failed for two of them - one was on Plusnet and the other Asda mobile. Both of those MVNOs run on EE, so maybe it's only EE MVNOs that are affected? I guess this is a relatively small section of the UK population, which is good. Cheers, Al |