Undelivered text messages

Electronics & Technology
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I currently use Optus as my mobile phone service provider. I have had a lot of trouble in recent months with several of my sent text messages never being delivered to my intended recipient.
When I ask Optus about this, they say that there is maintenance in my area which can cause outages, but, they have been telling me this for 18 months. I am thinking of switching providers but I am trying to understand if the issue is with Optus or if it is with the technology.
Does anyone else have this issue and if so, which service providers do you use?
Does anyone know why this can happen if it is not the fault of the provider?
Anything else that would be useful for me to know?

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Straight off I would ask whether you have an iPhone and whether you have enabled iMessage. The point of the question is if it’s “yes” and “yes” and you are sending to another iPhone with iMessage also enabled then the message will go via Apple, not via Optus - and Optus has no control or visibility as to what happens.

On an iPhone you can tell whether the text went as an iMessage or as an SMS by the colour - blue for iMessage, green for SMS.

Another consideration is that SMS is by design not guaranteed delivery. (You can also specify a timeout when you send an SMS that says how long the system should allow for delivery i.e. if that period expires without delivery then the SMS is silently discarded. I doubt anyone is using that functionality.)

I have all three providers and I have generally not had any problems with messages being dropped.

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Well obviously apart from the sending provider, it could be the fault of the receiving provider and it could be the fault of the receiving phone.

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Thanks for your reply. My bad, I should have indicated this. I have a Samsung Android phone.

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Some people are also using messaging apps like signal (an example) and a sending signal knows if the receiving phone also has signal. I discovered everyone with signal does not use it for the default message app and rarely open or look at it, so messages might be received but never noticed. The point is there is also an element of human error and technological confusion that can cause messages to appear lost.

If you use the standard Android message app, go into the message app settings and under the SIM you will find an option ‘Get SMS delivery reports’ that tells you when the SMS has been delivered - It defaults to ‘off’ because not all mobile systems honour the feature so take it for what it might be worth.

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Thank you. I couldn’t find the exact setting you mention but I did find another which is ‘‘Show when delivered’’ for multimedia messages which I have enabled. Not all text messages are multi media but I will see what this gives me.

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Text can be SMS or MMS. The former the original short message service, the latter can include small multimedia like photos or short video clips.
My old Android phone was very hit and miss on sending or receiving MMS text. Not a problem with SMS.
So which are you using? And what sort of phone does your friend have?

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We’ve had issues randomly, with Optus as a local carrier, and also Telstra. The senders or recipients have been a cross section of all 3 major mobile carriers and the phones a mixture of Android and iPhone. We text many more times than use voice. 10-20 times more often.

Delivery failure seems a random event and more likely a delayed transmission or receipt than total loss. We put it down to poor service signal or congestion at one end or the other.

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It’s both SMS and MMS and it’s multiple recipients who have different phones.

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Thanks, that sounds very similar to my experience with multiple recipients across different carriers and both Android and iPhone. I also text many more times than use voice.
I had been thinking about switching to Telstra however if you have had the same experience with them, I am not sure that will solve the problem.
Thanks also for your comment on likely cause of delivery failure. If it happens across multiple carriers, your explanation makes good sense.

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11

I once had a text deliver 48 hours after being sent, I was in NZ and my daughter had sent a text about the house build. Luckily it wasn’t urgent but if the message is urgent, trying by voice call is probably safest with a text follow up if wanted. When voice signal is poor or the receiver may be offline then SMS can be useful, but a follow up should always be made if it is an important matter.

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12

OK, sorry, I probably won’t be much help then.

This point needs emphasis. SMS and MMS are very different in implementation and behaviour. There are many more points of failure for MMS.

So, for the purposes of getting to the bottom of it, focusing on SMS only would be wise.

Yep. SMS, like email, is and always has been: store-and-forward, non-guaranteed delivery.

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SMS and MMS messages are deemed low priority compared to voice traffic, and so are queued up until there is sufficient bandwidth to send. If you live in an area where there is high volumes of calls, from nearby towers being out of service, from damage to towers due to weather, or it is a holiday when people call each other, etc the non-voice traffic can be queued up waiting for transmission for significant periods of time.

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