Text message delivery
Communications can sometimes be a little iffy, as much in the electronic era as it was in the past. When we send a page or a text message, we may think it has been delivered, and yet we may be wrong. Because of this uncertainty regarding delivery, religious courts have ruled that Muslim men cannot divorce their wives via text message: They must show up and do it in person.
For many people, text messaging from one mobile device to another has become a way of life. This editor, for example, sends many, many, many messages. How do you know that a text message has actually been delivered? Well, in many cases you get a message back telling you that it has been delivered. And therein lies the rub!
In truth, the message does tell you that it has been delivered, and it has been delivered. But delivered where? As an example, if I send a text message from my American T-Mobile handset to another T-Mobile handset, or to a Eurotel Praha handset, it means that the message was actually received at the other handset, and I am in essence getting a confirmation from that handset. But if you send a message to a Sprint handset they will be accepted by Sprint, but not delivered unless they pay for the service.
On the other hand, if I send a message from an AT&T Wireless handset, the delivery message seems to indicate that the message has been received by the SMS system, but not that it has actually been delivered. As best as we can deduce, AT&T Wireless simply didn’t bother to implement this particular feature. And if you send to other service providers,
The bottom line is that we tend to make assumptions as to what things mean, and that sometimes these assumptions are wrong. If you depend on communications, keep in mind that, as a good rule of thumb, the only time you can be sure someone got your message is if they send you one back in response. Or if you speak with them, and they tell you that it has arrived.
