Are your text messages cut short (truncated)?

New accounts are limited to a maximum of one-message-part (160 characters using GSM characters). Many customers require this limit extended so long text messages can be sent.

You can update your account for sending longer messages on a per-user basis:

• Log into the Web Dasboard at https://www.tnz.co.nz/
• Select Users | Outbound Users from the menu
• Click on the user you would like to update
• Click the Edit/Modify button
• Select the SMS Options tab
• Adjust SMS Parts Limit to match the number of allowed message parts
• Click the Update button
• Repeat these steps for other users that require updating

The SMS pricing is per SMS and SMS messages over 160 characters will be charged accordingly (e.g. 161 characters will be the quoted single SMS price multiplied by two).

However, if you send your SMS message using UCS-2 encoding, the number of characters per message is reduced to 70 characters. Some characters and symbols are not supported using the standard GSM character set, which causes your SMS message to automatically convert to UCS-2. The most common causes are curly “ and ” style apostrophes and accented é letters that are included when copying text from a Microsoft Word document into a SMS message, or use of foreign language characters (such as some Asian characters).

See the GSM 03.38 specifications for more information.

howto, how to