international txting

[quincy]

hi guys, i have a bit of a dilema, i am english and live in the uk and am on a vodafone pay as you go network, my girlfriend is canadian and is on a rogers pay as you go network. we can ring each other on the phones but cannot sms each other. it always comes up as sms failed. i can sms other countries but not canada.

 

[Scape]

Check with vodafone and see if the they a roaming agreement for sms. Both networks can have sms ability but if the agreement is not in place it won't work and pay as you go usually has almost no international features.

 

[Lark]

Rogers has no international SMS service. That's why I had to settle for Telus. I only had 3 choices here - Rogers, Bell and Telus. Of these three, it was only Telus that, probably a year ago (don't know when they actually started offering it but I know for certain that when I tried to get a Telus almost three years ago, they didn't have that in place yet), started offering international SMS.

You can send SMS to her via the web - Yahoo Messenger also accepts Rogers phones - but of course it's not as convenient as being able to send text messages with your phone anywhere.

 

[Lark]

You'd probably have to wait a year or more before Rogers and others start offering international SMS. Cellphones are still a rarity here in Canada compared to other parts of the world so the services these providers offer are still very limited.

And a correction:
Prepaid phones have no international roaming capabilities (at least here in Canada) but they do have international SMS if the provider offers it. That's why, if you do a lot of international SMS, you should call each service provider and ask them about it. I called Rogers and Bell before and with one of them (I can't remember which of them specifically) you can only send SMS to phones with the same provider. With the other one, you can send SMS to other phones but only within Canada (and I think the USA, not sure - that was 7 months ago when I canvassed these providers). Things might have changed now.