SMS Gateway

Definition - What does SMS Gateway mean?

Short Message Service (SMS) gateway is a mechanism by which SMS messages are sent and received. SMS gateways facilitate and streamline text messaging processes for organizations, and will often do some of the conversion to different formats.

Techopedia explains SMS Gateway

Developers have two options when implementing SMS messaging applications, as follows:

  • Application connectivity to a wireless carrier’s short message service center (SMSC): A developer must be familiar with the SMSC protocol and may want to enable messaging to phones with different wireless carriers. This becomes complicated because different carriers may use different SMSCs and different protocols. Thus, a developer must modify his application for multiprotocol communication. To simplify, an SMS gateway may be placed between the application and the SMSC, requiring that the application communicate with the SMS gateway instead of the SMSC.

    If new SMSCs are introduced to the system, some configurations must be set on the SMS gateway. However, this task is less complicated than application changes.
  • Application connectivity to a mobile phone or a modem: A developer must be familiar with ATtention (AT) command implementation when enabling application communication with a phone or modem. By placing an SMS gateway in the middle, the developer only needs to communicate with the SMS gateway.

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