SMPP for Quick and Reliable Message Delivery

SMPP, or Short Message Peer-to-Peer, is an open message transfer protocol that allows for the wholesale exchange of texts between both SMEs (Short Message Entities) and ESMEs (External Short Message Entities) on the one side, and an SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) on the other. It is the vital link for enabling high volume mobile message communication with your customers, whilst also ensuring that messages are delivered quickly and reliably, every time.

The SMPP exchange takes place with request/response packets using TCP or X.25 SVC3 as the underlying transport agent. What this means is that SMPP makes it possible to communicate with your customers using a third party application or device over a networked connection.

It is the request/response feature of this protocol that ensures the safe delivery of data between the ESME and the SMSC. SMPP PDUs (Protocol Data Units) are binary encoded, and contain a number of transactions to be completed with the transmission of each message. One example is the DELIVER_SM command, issued to the ESME when the SMSC transmits a short message. Its corresponding response is DELIVER_SM_Resp. Setting the registered delivery flag of a message will generate a report after the entire message has been transmitted.

Although SMPP v5 has already been released, v3.3 is the most widely employed. The most notable difference between v3.3 and v3.4 is that the latter provides transceiver support. This means that v3.3 will require a separate virtual connection and SMPP session for transmitting and receiving messages. Developers are, however, encouraged to go through the specific SMS gateway API (Application Programming Interface) documentation as certain service providers allow the use of BIND_TRANSCEIVER, requiring only one virtual connection and one session to both transmit and receive.

If you’re still wondering about the real world use of the SMPP protocol, then look no further than your own phone. Whether you receive weather updates on a daily basis, get the rugby score sent to your mobile or rely on the delivery of the most recent exchange rates to your phone, SMPP was most probably employed as the method of communication between the sender and your SMSC. From there, the SMS message was delivered to you.

SMPP offers so much more for the high volume SMS message sender, than the most often used SMS gateway HTTP API, so why not consider the SMPP alternative for high-volume SMS messaging.

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Tags: bulk sms, Clickatell, mobile application developers, mobile developers, SMPP, SMPP protocol, SMS gateway, SMS gateway API, SMS Gateways