delayed arrival of text messages

littlerock

For some reason incoming text messages are all over the place arriving on my mobile (Sony xperia orange/three) The other day a text from an acquaintance, arrived here 3 days late although it had been sent standing outside my house. Today a text from my sister (iPhone Vodafone) took 4 hours to arrive and one from the oh (galaxy S3) took 2 hours to arrive. (sisters and ohs both arrived at same time). My software is up to date. I have tested on myself and arrives at once. done a soft reset. Baffled. Any ideas?

gjchester

littlerock wrote: »

For some reason incoming text messages are all over the place arriving on my mobile (Sony xperia orange/three) The other day a text from an acquaintance, arrived here 3 days late although it had been sent standing outside my house. Today a text from my sister (iPhone Vodafone) took 4 hours to arrive and one from the oh (galaxy S3) took 2 hours to arrive. (sisters and ohs both arrived at same time). My software is up to date. I have tested on myself and arrives at once. done a soft reset. Baffled. Any ideas?

Texts are not a time sensitive service. While they have a maximum validity (usually 3 days) and are usually instant they can be delayed for no apparent reason, and there is very little that can be done.

Consider new years eve, network congestion usually means texts can be instant or delayed by many hours

corf999

I bet all the senders are vodafone!

My vodafone friends texts often are delayed by several hours - other networks seem to be ok for me.

[Deleted User]

I have had problems several times with Vodafone texts taking three hours to arrive at their destination but very little trouble with O2 texts to EE mobiles or the return texts from EE mobiles.
However network troubles can result in texts going completely astray and never being delivered, and the same can happen with MMS messages as I found out in Portsmouth in October when O2 took my 25p but never delivered the photo message.
I think it's just a technology thing as the same sometimes happens with emails so if you want to be sure the message gets through then it's best to make a phone call !

littlerock

My sister's provider is vodafone but OH's is Orange, same as mine. Both their texts were hours late arriving this morning. I can appreciate the odd text might go astray/get delayed but lately it seems like most of mine are which makes it pointless having them at all really.

I am dealing with some builder-y types and they tend to communicate by text because they are often on other client's sites and also it acts as a record of what we have discussed. So it makes it particularly awkward not getting their texts in any reasonable timescale.

I did notice, looking it up to see if anyone else had the problem, that middle of last year there were reports that having wifi on could prevent texts getting through on Sonys, and Sony was supposed to be working on it. Not clear if they came up with a solution. I did not have wifi on earlier but I did have network mobile data as I had been using it while out and forgot to turn it off. Will test out that as a theory this weekend.

gjchester

SMS as a service uses a set of channels that are also used for setting up calls, it was never meant to work across networks, but the fact people use it means it evolved to do so. I remember my first phone could not send a cross network text.


However the nature of how its sent means the network can slow delivery down if its busy, and theres nothing you can do about it.


Not what you wanted to know, but just a fact of how they work..

Andy7856

Do you leave your phone on 24/7 by any chance? I read on another Forum (o2 I think) that some times if a phone is on 24/7 it can get lost on the network and SMS messages cant get through.


Not sure if correct or not or just a school boy theory...

[Deleted User]

Andy 7856 - I think you are right in assuming that it's a schoolboy theory. As long as a mobile phone is switched on and is in range of a mast it will occasionally log in to the network as a "handshake" as it were and you don't even know it has happened.
You can check this by leaving your phone next to a stereo system or radio that is switched on and wait for the digital warble every so often.

System

SMS are sent to and from a short message service centre (SMSC); your phone never sent them anywhere else.

My first phone could send SMS to any network that had a roaming agreement with my home network. Domestic cross network SMS required further network agreement.

Prior to that you could usually use a foreign network's SMSC to send cross network domestically

gjchester wrote: »

SMS as a service uses a set of channels that are also used for setting up calls, it was never meant to work across networks, but the fact people use it means it evolved to do so. I remember my first phone could not send a cross network text.

gjchester

Heng_Leng wrote: »

SMS are sent to and from a short message service centre (SMSC); your phone never sent them anywhere else.

My first phone could send SMS to any network that had a roaming agreement with my home network. Domestic cross network SMS required further network agreement.

Prior to that you could usually use a foreign network's SMSC to send cross network domestically

True, but as the internet wasn't that big so knowing a foreign SMSC was hard..


The point was generally they were only deliverable to the same network as the SMSC they were sent to, and at that time networks didn't charge for SMS as it was not seen to be any value to customers..