Common Short Code texting impossible

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David G. Imber - 29 Aug 2008 18:43 GMT

    I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
that the iPhone does not appear to be able to send text messages to
numbers fewer than 10 digits.

    Is this correct? Thanks!

    DGI

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Todd Allcock - 29 Aug 2008 21:19 GMT

At 29 Aug 2008 13:43:33 -0400 David G.Imber wrote:

> I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
> that the iPhone does not appear to be able to send text messages to
> numbers fewer than 10 digits.
>
> Is this correct? Thanks!

Since you said you discovered by accident, and since short codes are all
either 5 or 6 digits, is it possible that the iPhone automatically rejects
guaranteed "illegal" numbers (less than 5 digits, or more than 6 but less
than 10?) I find it hard to believe that the iPhone lacks the ability to
use short codes and no one's brought it up herein the last year! ;-)

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David G. Imber - 29 Aug 2008 22:25 GMT

>Since you said you discovered by accident, and since short codes are all
>either 5 or 6 digits, is it possible that the iPhone automatically rejects
>guaranteed "illegal" numbers (less than 5 digits, or more than 6 but less
>than 10?) I find it hard to believe that the iPhone lacks the ability to
>use short codes and no one's brought it up herein the last year! ;-)

    I tested it with a six-digit code from a CNN survey of some
sort (I didn't intend to participate and was going to cancel the
message at the last moment, but wanted to figure out the procedure as
I'm not much of a texter).

    So I suspect the code was legitimate. Please also see my other
response on this thread. I subsequently received a response on this
inquiry from AT&T confirming that I _cannot_ text to numbers less than
ten digits.

    As I say, I've never been inclined to do much texting, and
when I did it was to ten-digit numbers. So in this case I thought I
might just be unfamiliar with the procedure.

    Thank you! DGI

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Jeffrey Kaplan - 30 Aug 2008 06:46 GMT

Previously on misc.phone.mobile.iphone, David G. Imber said:

> I tested it with a six-digit code from a CNN survey of some
> sort (I didn't intend to participate and was going to cancel the
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> inquiry from AT&T confirming that I _cannot_ text to numbers less than
> ten digits.

I just tested by sending "help" to 466453, which is Google's SMS
interface number. It worked, and I got the expected help response back
from Google about a half-second after my iPhone finished sending.

iPhone 3G (using EDGE) on AT&T.

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Anybody - 29 Aug 2008 22:56 GMT

> At 29 Aug 2008 13:43:33 -0400 David G.Imber wrote:
> > I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> than 10?) I find it hard to believe that the iPhone lacks the ability to
> use short codes and no one's brought it up herein the last year! ;-)

5 or 6 digits ... you call that "short"?!? Here in New Zealand we
usually have things like competitions and TV news polls that have only
3 digit numbers to send the TXT message to. :-)

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David G. Imber - 30 Aug 2008 07:33 GMT

> I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
>that the iPhone does not appear to be able to send text messages to
>numbers fewer than 10 digits.
>
> Is this correct? Thanks!

    I apologize for wasting anyone's time with this (not to
mention my own).

    Since posting this message I have successfully texted to a few
5- and 6-digit short code text numbers.

    I don't know why my first experiment failed, and now I have no
idea why the AT&T rep gave me the wrong information. But that affirms
my long-standing belief that I can find more informed people here than
in the corporations whose products and services I'm asking about.

    Thanks to all who responded! DGI

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Anybody - 30 Aug 2008 22:34 GMT

> > I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
> >that the iPhone does not appear to be able to send text messages to
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> Thanks to all who responded! DGI

People on help desks are usually students and non-tech people who
simply read an on-screen script. They actually know nothing about the
product ... and like salespeople, they could be dealing with shoes one
day, change jobs to computers the next and then chage to cars the
following week.

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Blackjack Joe - 31 Aug 2008 03:58 GMT

> I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
> that the iPhone does not appear to be able to send text messages to
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> DGI

I just sent a message to Twitter's short code of 40404 with no apparent
problem.

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Zaphod42 - 31 Aug 2008 04:00 GMT

> I've never had occasion to do so, but I discovered by accident
> that the iPhone does not appear to be able to send text messages to
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> DGI

Oh, and I was successful on the AT&T network and I got a response to my
text message in just a couple of seconds. Tried to do a direct twitter
to someone that doesn't follow me, got the error messages texted back
from twitter that the person doesn't follow me.

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