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In earlier years, when I wanted to programmatically send text messages to mobile phones/cell phones I needed to know the carrier and the carrier's text service domain name in order to form the To: address.

But these days, many sites are able to text without asking me for my carrier.

How are they doing that? Is there a new way to send sms and imessage "emails" without the carrier element?

H. Ferrence
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    PHPMailer knows nothing about SMS, but some mobile networks have email to SMS gateways. Otherwise I suggest using an SMS gateway directly, such as Clickatell. – Synchro Apr 30 '16 at 12:28
  • Ok, thank you @Synchro. So if I interpret your comment, your answer is that you (still) cannot send mail messages without knowing the carrier's mailing domain. Otherwise, you need to use a third party API (either free or paid-for). Correct? – H. Ferrence Apr 30 '16 at 12:37
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    Yes, that's right. You might be able to find a list since there are not that many carriers – Synchro Apr 30 '16 at 12:53

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However they are doing it, they are ultimately sending a message to a correctly formatted 'email' address. For example, if a person has mobile phone number 555-666-7777 and the carrier is AT&T.. they are sending a message to 5556667777@txt.att.net.

They could be using a service that takes a phone number and returns a properly formatted 'email' address, or they could be using a script that tries each carriers 'postfix' after a given number until they find one that works. There is also the possibility for any phone number that it doesn't belong to a device that can accept email messages (an SMS is ultimately an email message) such as a landline.

Jim
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