Updated information on SMS to Bell/Telus customers

[Jim Udall]

Well I spent a few hours in the lab today – trying to wrestle with the issue of SMS delivery failures to Bell/Telus networks.  I have good news and bad news on that front.

 

The good news is that SMS message delivery is now working for all carriers – including Bell/Telus.

 

The bad news is that MMS is now unavailable.  If you don’t care about MMS, you can stop reading the rest of this message now.  If you’re curious about how some pricing adjustment on the part of a couple carriers somehow affects SMS delivery then read on.

 

I have 4 modem banks in the lab at UBC.  3 of them are identical.  The 4^th is different.  Functionally they are all equivalent.  However, the 3 identical machines use a different modem chip set than the fourth.

 

It turns out that the Bell/Telus problem manifested itself on some Fido SIMS – that is true.  However, another important differentiator was that it manifested itself on this 4^th modem bank.  Thru experimentation, I have concluded that I can move these FIDO SIMs to the other modem banks – and the problem disappears.  Hence the problem follows the modem – and not the SIM.

 

Now the 3 identical banks are all based on a Siemens chipset.  The 4^th however is some bizarre chipset from a mainland Chinese manufacturer.  I had never heard of them – and I assumed they had just copied some popular ASIC design and produced their own version.  I am jumping to the conclusion that something like the IMEI number associated with an originating device is conveyed in the SMS message as it moves thru the cellular network.  I therefore conclude that Bell/Telus does some parsing of IMEI’s to try to guess if this is a legitimate looking originator.  I also include they don’t like this device.

 

As bizarre as this explanation seems, it’s pretty much the only one that fits the observed behavior.  I mean this modem bank has been working for months – and suddenly it’s unable to send to Bell/Telus numbers only (GSM numbers still work).

 

So I moved the SIMs out of that oddball modem bank and into one of the other banks – and voila – SMS works again.

 

Now why is MMS unavailable?

 

Well there was a reason why I tried a different manufacturer.  The MMS stack I was using did not work on the other modem banks.  I don’t have access to the source code for that stack and as such I was unable to adapt to that modem.  However, the 4^th modem was compatible with the MMS stack – and it works quite well on that modem.

 

So I made an executive decision:  Better to have working bi-directional SMS to all carriers at this point and no access to MMS – rather than bi-directional MMS and only reduced access to MMS.

 

I think I’ll get another SIM to use exclusively for MMS – and run it in the oddball bank.  Until then however… no MMS.

 

Jim Udall
CTO
QuickMobile
jim....@quickmobile.com

m: 604.716,1523
o: 604.875.0403
f: 604.875.0603

www.quickmobile.com

 

[Mike Wozniewski]

This is mostly for Jennifer, but I thought I'd post to the list in case
anyone else is interested in following this.

I spent some time yesterday looking for a convenient way to access
thumbnails for Livecast streams, but I can't seem to find a way. As far
as I'm aware, there are three sources of information:

- The rendered webpage for a Livecast user (eg,
www.livecast.com/live/?mikewoz)
- The RSS feed for a Livecast user (eg, www.livecast.com/rss.aspx?mikewoz)
- The stream itself

The webpage has thumbnails for each *archived* stream, but I'd prefer
not to parse html, and thumbnails for live stream are not available. The
RSS feed has all of the other information: title, description, link, and
pubDate ... but there is no link to the thumbnail image. The standard
image preview (ie, via Quicktime's SFPGetFilePreview()) returns just a
white image, so it seems that getting the image from the stream is not
possible.

I think the most elegant method would be to add a link to the thumbnail
in the RSS. Jennifer, can you find out if this is possible?

Thanks,
Mike

[Jennifer Blome]

Back to you on this today -- sorry for delay!

[Jennifer Blome]

Hi All,

Use this info link, it provides more than the RSS link:
http://stage.livecast.com/live/info.aspx?Andriy

Replace "Andriy" with your "username".

Open the file, to see the LIVE information; you'll need to have your live
stream broadcasting for that username.

At the top of the file will be the "profile" information, next will be
"live" with a "+" sign. Click on it to expand.

In the expanded area under "live", you'll see the direct link to the large
and small thumbnails, just put the server URL in front of the link (e.g.
www.livecast.com/<thumbnailURL>). This will display the thumbnail for the
live stream.

Let me know if you have any questions. I can run you through it on the phone
with a live stream and the file open.

(Roland, I'll try to get you something more formal written to post on the
developer website, but this isn't confidential.)

Jennifer

-----Original Message-----
From: muse3-p...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:muse3-p...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Wozniewski
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 11:08 AM
To: muse3-p...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Thumbnails for Livecast streams