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How can I identify cell phone provider?

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southbeach

Programmer
Jan 22, 2008
879
US
Working on a simple SMS Script to send SMS Text Messages. As of now, I have a list of service providers and their respective email addresses. I am looking for a way to NOT having to depend on the user choosing a provider so that my script can, in turn, make-up the email address (i.e.: phone@provider_fqdn.com).

I found a few sites that seem to do phone search and provide info ... I tested using my own phone but found that their data is obsolete. My current provider is T-Mobile and the sites come back as Sprint. Over five years ago I got my service through Sprint but switched about 3.5 years ago ...

What say you?

Thank you all in advance!




--
SouthBeach
The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.
 
speaking from a European perspective, as of 7 years ago when I was head of legal for T-Mobile International and as of 5 years ago when I was running a joint venture between all the major european operators, there was no way reliably to determine the provenance of a mobile number (based on msisdn alone) if you were not connected to GRX or otherwise part of the operator community. the reason is simply due to number portability. i.e. the right to issue sims within a number range (or rather to associate a SIM with an MSISDN) belongs to a single operator, but this right/monopoly applies only to the first issue of that MSISDN

For a while one could make assumptions relatively safely, due to the likelihood of consumer stickiness. However this has definitely gone out of the window.

If you are using a grown up sms gateway managed by a netco, then they can do the routing for you. this does not help if you are trying to use the free email gateways provided by some US operators. Note that this method is not reliable in Europe.
 
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