Hi, folks,
A client of mine is having trouble delivering (legitimate) email to tmomail.net, and I'm having trouble finding the right contact. (e.g. postmaster bounced).
I've verified the legitimate nature of the email (only user-initiated, and nothing more), the valid SPF, A, PTR, and MX records, etc. We're also having no trouble sending the equivalent messages to the email-to-SMS gateways at ATT Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, etc.
Any suggestions for the best points of contact at T-Mobile USA (tmomail.net)?
thanks!
Graham Freeman
graham.freeman@cernio.com (Email/Jabber/SIP)
+1 415 462 2991 (office)
I just tested, and was able to successfully send an email to my
Tmobile address [myphone#]@tmomail.net. Are you getting bounces /
failures back that are of any use? Also FWIW (and sanity check) any
reason why your client wants to use email-to-SMS, rather than just
SMS. From what I understand email-to-sms isn't the best platform for
getting messages to mobile devices but I may be missing some
client-specific visibility.
--Jaren
I just tested, and was able to successfully send an email to my
Tmobile address [myphone#]@tmomail.net. Are you getting bounces /
failures back that are of any use? Also FWIW (and sanity check) any
reason why your client wants to use email-to-SMS, rather than just
SMS. From what I understand email-to-sms isn't the best platform for
getting messages to mobile devices but I may be missing some
client-specific visibility.
Hi, Jaren,
Delivering SMS-to-SMS would be impractical and prohibitively expensive. This is for an iPhone messaging app that optionally delivers messages to SMS recipients for free. The business model depends on email-to-SMS gateways.
Like you, we were able to deliver messages in low volumes, but as the app became increasingly popular (at one point in the Top 20 in the App Store) the volume exceeded a opaque-to-us rate limit at Tmobile, but not at other mobile providers - some of whom we're sending many more messages than we ever tried to deliver to Tmobile.
Two examples out of thousands:
Apr 30 23:52:52 pomelo.borange.com postfix/error[17836]: [ID 197553 mail.info] D44451D9570: to=<[xxxxxxxxxx]@tmomail.net>, relay=none, delay=80196, delays=80195/0.18/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mm3.tmomail.net[66.94.25.228] refused to talk to me: 421 mail.tmail.com closing connection)
May 1 16:17:58 pomelo.borange.com postfix/smtp[24906]: [ID 197553 mail.info] 7CC5D1E9D7F: to=<[xxxxxxxxxx]@tmomail.net>, relay=mm3.tmomail.net[66.94.9.228]:25, delay=59233, delays=59229/0/4.2/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mm3.tmomail.net[66.94.9.228] refused to talk to me: 421 mail.tmail.com closing connection)
thanks,
Graham
I'm surprised more gateways aren't rate limiting or blocking you; my
experience with these services is such that the providers really want
you to utilize SMS instead, if you build up any sort of significant
volume. I've certainly seen multiple providers delay this inbound mail
periodically.
Cheers,
Al Iverson
Al beat me to responding to this, but +1 on his comment. IIUC, the
email-to-sms is definitely not for commercial use (as in an iPhone
app), and is more for 1 to 1 type communications. If your client is
looking to build a business around SMS communications, they need to
make the investment to use the standard SMS platforms.
--Jaren
I'm surprised more gateways aren't rate limiting or blocking you; my
experience with these services is such that the providers really want
you to utilize SMS instead, if you build up any sort of significant
volume. I've certainly seen multiple providers delay this inbound mail
periodically.
Hi, Al,
That may be, but it would surprise me. The carriers still get paid by virtue of charging the recipients for the SMSes, and in this particular case cutting off this line of communication is leaving money on the table, as email->SMS deliverability is desired yet optional/secondary functionality of the app.
That may be, but it would surprise me. The carriers still get paid
> by virtue of charging the recipients for the SMSes, and in this
> particular case cutting off this line of communication
is leaving money on the table, as email->SMS deliverability
is desired yet optional/secondary functionality of the app.
Based on what I see in the marketplace today, I think that the average wireless carrier exec doesn't do the same math. For them, I think it's more like:
Q: What's better than a service we can charge our users for?
charging somebody else.
Thanks for the clarification on this -- I didn't think this was the
latter type of messaging, and perhaps my use of "commercial" was the
wrong terminology. That being said, as your client appears to have
issues only when the volume goes up, perhaps TMobile is getting the
perception that these message are in some way "commercial", based on
volume -- just a thought.
In any case, back to Al's point, I agreed with him because I'm under
the impression that mobile providers are leery of companies using
email-to-sms (vs straight SMS) because of the spam potential. IIUC,
it's much easier to manage / control abuse issues with SMS. I'm a bit
out of my expertise element here, so I could be missing something.
--Jaren
That's probably why the mail is only being deferred (as you indicated on the mailop list), rather than rejected outright.