SMS Delivery Statuses

When reviewing the SMS (text message) history for a sent message in Omnilert, you will see that Omnilert collects a status for each text sent.

Important note: SMS receipts are provided by mobile carriers as a courtesy. Mobile carriers are not required to provide delivery information for standard texts. As such, not all carriers support them and receipts may be unavailable at times. This does not indicate non-delivery as returning SMS receipts is optional for carriers. 

The SMS delivery statuses are shown as list of totals in the message history:

Any status in green/yellow indicates some form of success; the message went through or didn't return an error. 

Any status in red indicates some kind of delivery error was returned by the carrier and/or their SMS gateway. 

SMS Success Codes

The following return statuses indicate varying degrees of success.

• Prerouting Complete: SMS was transferred without error to the SMS gateway.
• Sent to Carrier: Carrier confirms receipt through the SMS gateway.
• Accepted by Carrier: Carrier has accepted the message for processing/delivery
• Delivered to Handset: The carrier has confirmed delivery of the text. 

SMS Error Codes

Any status shown in red will indicate that the carrier gateway returned an error for that text message.

Carriers control the return error codes and often assign cryptic names to their errors. The error code meanings can vary for each mobile provider and new/unknown codes are common.

The most common SMS delivery errors we see are:

• Fail - Invalid Service Type
• Carrier could not be resolved by CNS
• Carrier Undeliverable / Carrier Denied

What can we do if a phone doesn't receive SMS from Omnilert?

The first thing to test is texting the word HELP to 79516. If the phone receives a response from Omnilert, it should be able to receive future text alerts.*

However, the carrier may respond with an error message if service to that number is blocked/restricted. That may help determine why the messaging was blocked or provide a service number for that carrier. 

The subscriber may need to contact their mobile carrier for assistance with receiving SMS from Omnilert's shortcode, 79516.

Alternative options

If standard SMS does not work, you can try setting their phone with its carrier set as "Other". This setting may work for some non-standard phone plans and prepaid carriers.

If a subscriber's phone has a fully blocked/restricted texting plan, they may still need to contact their mobile carrier for further assistance. 

*Note: Shortcode SMS works with US-based phone numbers only. This method will not work for phone numbers outside of the United States.