SMS Text Messages
Your MailBug is also a text messaging machine! You can send SMS text messages by just sending an email, and receiving text messages as emails – all right from your MailBug!
Major US wireless mobile carriers in the US offer an email-to-text service (called a “gateway”) that allow email messages to be sent to a mobile cellphone as an SMS text message. Text messages are normally short – under 160 characters. Text messages longer than 160 characters are broken up into parts and sent as separate text messages.
Sending a text messages from a cellphone to a MailBug is easy. Just enter the MailBug email address when sending a text.
To send a text message to someone from your MailBug you must know the name of that person’s mobile service provider (e.g., ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, etc) and their mobile phone number. Simply send them an email message using the address format specified by that person’s mobile service provider (see list below), and that message will be delivered to their phone as a text message.
If that person replies to your text message, you’ll receive that reply as an email on your MailBug.
To send a text message from your MailBug you’ll need to know the recipient’s cellphone number and the name of their mobile service provider, and that provider’s specific addressing format. Below are some email-to-text formats for major wireless carriers. If the cellular carrier you need is not on the list, then ask that provider for their email-to-text gateway.
- AT&T — number@txt.att.net
- Verizon — number@vtext.com
- T-Mobile — number@tmomail.net
- Sprint — number@messaging.sprintpcs.com
- Alltel — number@message.alltel.com
- Boost Mobile — number@myboostmobile.com
- Cricket — number@sms.mycricket.com
- US Cellular — number@email.uscc.net
- Virgin Mobile — number@vmobl.com
- MetroPCS — number@mymetropcs.com
- Republic Wireless — number@text.republicwireless.com
- Bell Canada — number@txt.bell.ca
The number must be exactly 10 digits long and not contain any spaces, hyphens, or other characters.
Do not include a “1” as a prefix.
To make sending text messages with the correct format really easy, consider creating an entry in your MailBug’s email address book for people with whom you frequently wish to exchange text messages. This way you will not have to remember the cellphone number and the specific addressing format for that person when you want to send a text message. Just select that person from your email address book and compose your text message.
Example
Say you want to send text messages to Jennifer who uses AT&T as her mobile service provider, and her mobile number is: 1-555-987-6543. Then you would create an entry in your MailBug’s email address book that looks something like this:
Name: Jennifer – text
Email address: 5559876543@txt.att.net
Make sure to save your new address book entry.
Now when you want to send a text message to Jennifer’s mobile phone, just press EMAIL, then COMPOSE, and then ADDRESS, and select her name from your email address book. Then the above email address will be automatically entered into the To: field on your MailBug’s compose email screen.
When your message is done and ready to be sent, press the SEND button in order to queue the message for sending. You can force the outgoing email to be sent immediately by holding down the CTRL key on the keyboard, and pressing CONNECT. This will force MailBug to dial and sent your email. Your message will be sent to Jennifer’s mobile phone as a text message. Jennifer can reply to your text message and you’ll receive it on your MailBug as an email. To manually check for a reply (after a few minutes) simply repeat the same key sequence to force MailBug to again connect and check for new incoming email.
Now it’s easy to exchange text messages with anyone!