This might have come up before, but does anyone know why MTS breaks up received SMS at 140 characters? When I receive a long text, it will be broken up into chunks (1-140) (140-160) (160-end) and so forth with any of those character chunks arriving in any order. When I send, the 160 character limit works, unless the message is longer than 160, then the messages split to 153 characters. Why is it that MTS can't rebuild the messages properly? Is this unique to MTS?
This might have come up before, but does anyone know why MTS breaks up received SMS at 140 characters? When I receive a long text, it will be broken up into chunks (1-140) (140-160) (160-end) and so forth with any of those character chunks arriving in any order. When I send, the 160 character limit works, unless the message is longer than 160, then the messages split to 153 characters. Why is it that MTS can't rebuild the messages properly? Is this unique to MTS?
It isn't unique to MTS - Rogers used to do the same thing to me.
SMS = "S"hort "M"essage "S"ervice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS it is sent on the control channel amongst all the other messaging that is going on between the tower and the phones 140 characters is what has been defined as short.
My apologies, I may not have been clear with my question. I am aware of the industry standard for the size of SMS messages. My question is why can't SMS messages sent/received through MTS rebuild properly? MMS messages seem to work, yet SMS will be broken into chunks received in a random order.
The same thing happens to me. The three pieces of the messages never come in order either which makes it even more annoying.
Are you on Rogers? Do the messages rebuild properly when you text Rogers-to-Rogers? From my experience my friends on Rogers will have the long SMS' rebuild properly and display as one long text, but as soon as an MTS phone gets in the mix it goes out the window.
Also, the little 20 character chunks are the most annoying since the don't have an order number attached, you have to guess where it falls in the message.
Are you on Rogers? Do the messages rebuild properly when you text Rogers-to-Rogers? From my experience my friends on Rogers will have the long SMS' rebuild properly and display as one long text, but as soon as an MTS phone gets in the mix it goes out the window.
Also, the little 20 character chunks are the most annoying since the don't have an order number attached, you have to guess where it falls in the message.
I've been on MTS since early October. Prior to that I was with Rogers.
Rogers would rebuild long messages properly. On MTS my messages are broken in the annoying chunks, the same as yours.
The chunks is an issue on MTS. But at least with MTS, if your phone goes out of service for a while, and you receive a text during that time, it will show the time the text was sent, and not the time your phone came back in service and received it. Rogers shows the time it reached your phone, which is very annoying.
Yes this frustrates me about the network. I have found however that it seems that MTS Blackberries are usually able to reconstruct the messages properly (NOT on BBM, but SMS). Ever since I switched to an Android its been all messed up like that.
Is it possible there is some special programming that is missed?
I've never had problems with receiving split texts on my android. they always come in order. I use GO sms for messaging, so maybe it keeps it in order.
Yes this frustrates me about the network. I have found however that it seems that MTS Blackberries are usually able to reconstruct the messages properly (NOT on BBM, but SMS). Ever since I switched to an Android its been all messed up like that.
Is it possible there is some special programming that is missed?
It's not an Android problem, as my old phone received SMS in the same way. I was hoping when I got my smart phone it would be fixed, but no such luck. If there is a setting that can fix it, I would definitely be interested, but that wouldn't help the Rogers people rebuild my sent messages.
I believe the issue comes from how carriers implement their SMS. According to the technical info on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Message_size), SMS's can be encoded as 7-bit (160 characters), 8 bit (140 characters) or 16 bit (70 characters).
I experience the issue as well, when my girlfriend (Rogers) texts me (MTS). I dug back into my text messaging archives, and I think it's safe to say that MTS uses 8 bit encoding and Rogers uses 7. Example:
Message 1:
"01/02: Our Christmas party is Friday at remingtons. I know u
had already told your friend we could go to the birthday thing (maybe we could " (140 characters)
Message 2:
"go after my party)." (20 characters)
Message 3:
"02/02: PS guest are welcome to if u wanted to come "
Rogers (or her phone) must add the 01/02, and it counts against the message size. MTS then receives the 160 character message and splits it up to 140 + 20. That's why you get the fragments. I assume the out of order issue is probably just a side effect of the 20 character message being smaller and transmitting more quickly. (In this case, the order was message 2, then 1, then 3. That's pretty typical in my experience).
I think you'd find that if you sent a long message from MTS to Rogers, that the message would be split correctly.
I think you'd find that if you sent a long message from MTS to Rogers, that the message would be split correctly.
Nope, when sending MTS to Rogers the messages are still split into the same chunks, but the numbers (01/02, etc) are not there. Also, when MTS' network is buggy, a >140 character message can end up split as well too. My friend (on Rogers) once sent me a screenshot of short message I sent him that came in 6 different chunks (not in order).
My friend in Alberta (I think on Telus) sent me a very long message the other day...it came in 11 chunks! It wasn't in order, and it didn't have the numbers at the start, so putting that in order (even on a 4.3" screen) was a fun puzzle. So I now agree that Rogers is adding the "01/02" at the start of the messages.
Honestly, I knew the answer to this problem from the start, I was just curious if anyone had any real technical answers. The sad truth is MTS doesn't have to fix these little annoyances because people like me don't switch to another provider.
I know Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but "long messages are split into smaller messages by the sending device and recombined at the receiving end. Each message is then billed separately. When the feature works properly, it is nearly transparent to the user, appearing as a single long text message."
Honestly, I knew the answer to this problem from the start, I was just curious if anyone had any real technical answers. The sad truth is MTS doesn't have to fix these little annoyances because people like me don't switch to another provider.
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Originally Posted by Astylis
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