How can I send/receive SMS messages from Russia/Kazakhstan (+7)?

July 9, 2007 7:12 AM

How do I send and receive SMS messages on the Internet or with my Sprint mobile to Russia and Kazakhstan?

Sprint indicated that my handset (Sanyo Katana with unlimited SMS messages) is equipped to both send and receive messages from +7 (Russia and KZ), including the rest of Europe and Asia at a rate of $0.15/message.

I have successfully sent/received from Germany, a Moscow-based mobile and Istanbul. So, the argument that Sprint is CDMA and not GSM seems not to matter.

When sending to non-Moscow +7 mobile numbers, my handset reports a successfully sent SMS and my next billing cycle includes a handful of "Int'l SMS" charges, but they are never received.

I've tried Skype, TextHQ and CallWave, but none of them seem to connect/send to my girlfriend's Nokia 8800 on K'Cell. She also tried her friend's SIM card and her friend's Nokia 6500 with her SIM card, which was able to send receive with T-Mobile and a Canadian GSM provider.

Am I missing something, or will I just have to stick with email and rapaciously expensive calling cards?

Спасибо болшое! / Thanks a lot!

posted by vkxmai to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Calling cards are the worst. I dated a Welsh girl and we had the same problem. Something I discovered worked was using Facebook, which has a text message component that works very well between country, as it is an intermediary and most texts go through. Maybe try it with someone who has facebook with someone in Russia also with facebook. It may solve the dilemma.
posted by parmanparman at 8:02 AM on July 9, 2007

Are you able to get in touch with Sprint customer service? If they are charging you for the international SMS's they should be getting through, and maybe they can help.
posted by aubilenon at 8:03 AM on July 9, 2007

(not helping your need...)
Sprint is CDMA.
They bought Nextel which was GSM.

You have a GSM phone.
posted by filmgeek at 8:18 AM on July 9, 2007

You're going to have to call your customer service people at Sprint. International SMS is fairly complex, the message leaves your phone, Sprint sends it to a peering gateway, that company sends it to another peering gateway, which in turn sends the message out to a European gateway before eventually ending up at the Russian carrier network. What I mean to say is... there are lots of fail points and Sprint should support the messages if they are charging you for them.


Despite all of that, any of the companies involved might not have a contract with another and then the SMS will never pass through to the end.
posted by MonkNoiz at 8:26 AM on July 9, 2007

Nextel is not GSM, it's iDEN. Normal Sprint phones are still CDMA. The two networks are still separate.
posted by marionnette en chaussette at 8:53 AM on July 9, 2007

Based on my experiences (friend in the Peace Corps, Kazakhstan) T-mobile works, presumably because it's GSM.
posted by pullayup at 10:38 AM on July 9, 2007

filmgeek: "(not helping your need...)
Sprint is CDMA.
They bought Nextel which was GSM.

You have a GSM phone."

NEXTEL uses a technology called iDEN, which is neither GSM nor CDMA, although it does use a SIM card like GSM phones do. The two networks Sprint owns (iDEN and CDMA) are completely separate and use different encoding schemes at different frequencies. GSM is not used by "Sprint, together with NEXTEL" at all.

NB: Sprint has to pay fines on the iDEN frequencies as they clobber some of the local emergency management bandwidth.
posted by Xoder at 11:14 AM on July 9, 2007

You can send international SMSs via the internet with ipipi.com. It's not free, but it's cheap.
posted by walla at 6:45 PM on July 9, 2007

I tried ipipi, which indicates that it supports K'Cell in Kazakhstan, but it didn't work. I'm inclined to think that K'Cell must be making some changes to their network that they're not publishing on their Web site.

Thanks for all your input, I guess this wasn't meant to be.

NB: I found two decent calling cards--nobelcom.com and tel3.com -- both offer about 250-300min to Russia/Kazkhastan for $25.
posted by vkxmai at 6:11 AM on July 10, 2007