Sending Longer SMS Messages (Multi-Part/Concatenation)

Are your text messages cut short (truncated)?

New accounts are normally limited to a maximum of three-message-parts (459 GSM characters). 

Normally, SMS messages are 160 characters including spaces and punctuation (some characters affect the allowed characters - see UCS2 below).

We support sending longer text messages - you are charged 'per SMS Part' that you send.

For example, if you send a 159 character message, you are charged for one SMS Part. However, if you send a 161 character message, you are charged for two SMS Parts.

How to increase your maximum allowed SMS Parts:

You can update your account for sending longer messages:

1. Log into the Web Dashboard at my.tnz.co.nz
2. Select Users from the menu
3. Click on the user you would like to update
4. Click the Edit/Modify button
5. Select the SMS tab
6. Adjust SMS Parts Length to match the number of allowed message parts
7. Click the Update button
8. Repeat these steps for other users that require updating

'Characters per SMS Part' Calculation:

Using 'Normal' SMS characters means you're allowed 160 characters for your first SMS Part, then 153 characters per SMS Part thereafter.

Characters per SMS Part when using Special Characters:

Some characters aren't 'Normal' SMS characters and require special encoding (called UCS-2, as opposed to GSM). When special characters are used, SMS Parts reduce to 67 characters.

The most common causes are emojis (❤️), curly quotes (“quote” versus "quote"), curly apostrophes (you’re versus you're) and language characters (such as 是 and é and ā).

In this example, adding a single Exclamation Mark emoji causes the first text to reduce to 70 characters per SMS Part and all subsequent parts are 67 characters:

See the GSM 03.38 specifications for a full list of standard GSM characters.