AT&T Email-To-Text Gateway Service Ending

Longtime Slashdot reader CyberSlugGump shares a support article from AT&T, writing: On June 17th, AT&T will stop supporting email-to-text messages. That means you won't be able to send a text message to an AT&T customer from an email address. You can still get in touch with AT&T customers using SMS (text), MMS, and standard email services.

Lame

[jrnvk]

I actually used this feature quite a bit for alerts, Now I have to find a middleware solution,

Re: Lame

[Ghostworks]

Me too. It was an easy way to get text alerts when an automated test finished in tools that already supported email.

Re:

[markdavis]

Me three. And it has always been pretty reliable too, surprisingly. I am on T-Mobile and hope they don't drop it. Lots of equipment/devices support Email (UPSes, iLo, printers, etc).

It sucks that everything that used to be easy and simple has to go and get crappified to death or destroyed.

And they don't even say WHY. If it is due to spam, then the solution is simple. Just allow the customer to opt into the function, or opt in AND provide domains they allow to Email->SMS them.

Re:

[spudnic]

I use the solution for contacting on-call personnel from within monitoring apps. You can't just tell everyone to switch providers.

Re:

[Burdell]

Email-to-SMS has always been a lightly-documented, "best effort" (don't call support if it doesn't go through or is delayed), and probably lightly-used service. Due to email abuse, it's never going to be a service that doesn't cost some money to support, so I can see it getting the axe from all the providers. I also wonder if the shift to RCS meant they were going to have to spend development money to keep it working and decided it wasn't used enough.

I've been on T-Mobile for ages, and I've seen their emai

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

Likewise. I use this as an easy way to get some python scripts to text me. If my ISP stops offering this I'll probably end up paying for a third party provider, but I'll admit it's not like this possibility has never crossed my mind.

Re:

[ElimGarak000]

Same.

Re:

[Snotnose]

Same, it's just something I do without thinking about it. Biggest use is cooking. Every week I figure out what's on sale, look for recipes, put the ingredients on a shopping list, and send the recipe itself to my phone. I refer to my phone when cooking.

Used to be solid as a rock under Virgin. Then T-Mobile bought Virgin and it's been iffy ever since.

Re:

[chas.williams]

In another job, I used mmcli and a dedicated modem to send messages directly. Since this was to help monitor the network, I couldn't rely on external services.

Tried using this with Verizon

[CyberSnyder]

My alerts never go through. I think it's Verizon blocking them Now if they could only block the stupid spam texts.I've given up on email to text gateways and do a WebEx bot so at least delivery is reliable. More formatting options and ultimately just a curl call.Too much spam in both email and texts and everyone is trying to block the spam that you're more likely to have an important notification disappear.

Re:

[Pauldow]

I’ve found that Verizon email to SMS or MMS messages don’t work well if using Microsoft email. It’s been working perfectly for me when I send the message through an email service I have on a cheap shared hosting service.

I didn't know this was still a thing.

[doubledown00]

Figured some techbro leech would have found a way to charge extra for this long ago.

Re:

[Shmoe]

I believe they call it 'PagerDuty'

Revenue

[ghinckley68]

My guess is it's about money. I have made lot's of reminder type apps that just send an sms via email, for free, why not figure a way to monetize that.

Re: Revenue

[Ghostworks]

I would bet it's something more banal. The billable SMS load of this has got to be minimal. It's probably that the backend servers are coming due for a refresh, and some manager finally asked, "why is this even in my budget? Does anyone actually need this? Do we really need to keep paying for it?"

Re:

[nadass]

I wouldn't call it banal but I would guess it's impacted by the Broadcom-VMware licensing nonsense that AT&T ultimately came to terms with. In order to shore up their budgets, they probably looked at the legitimate utilization of the services and decided to "cut their losses," as the saying goes.

other ideas

[slothman32]

I used this a few times. I'm old fogey, though not an old fogey, and won't use SMS.
Does anyone know any replacements for people that don't see email?

Home network alerts

[LazLong]

I use it for home network alerts. I guess I'll just have to switch to a dedicated email address that I allow to send alerts on my phone.