SMS Delays

Recently we were asked about SMS delays by two different clients. As it turns out, who your telephone carrier is and where you are can have bearing on this...

Causes of SMS Delay
At Well Done, we send out our SMS messages immediately. If a client is experiencing delays in receipt, it is likely to be a problem with the carrier. However, for the record, here are the potential causes of delay:

• Their phone is out of range - an SMS requires less signal to get through than a phone call, and will normally get through where a call may not
• Carrier capcity constraints - SMSs will normally get through in metropolitan areas faster BUT where there are high call volumes SMSs are given a lower priority by carriers than phone calls. They may allow a backlog to develop until enough bandwidth is available - it depends on their bandwidth and towers available.
• Volumes A large number of SMS messages going out at once - this is unlikely at Well Done as operators are taking calls all the time and our SMS messages aren't sent out all at once.

Note that your message is sent once the operator completes their call log. The message is time and date stamped on our Customer Management Application (CMA) both when the call was first received and when the message log was sent. We can also go into our message gateway account and check when an SMS was sent.

At Well Done we use Messagenet because of their superior service provision over cheaper alternatives; we need to ensure fast and reliable handling of emergency calls.