Connect to anyone, anywhere in the world for free!

October 20, 2007, by itsnearme

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Believe it or not, if you phone can do text messaging (or SMS) you can communicate to any email in the world for absolutely nothing! (except of course the standard text messaging fee - get a text message plan from your carrier, please!!!) Every wireless service provider in the USA, (AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc) give wireless subscribers the capability of receiving and sending SMS to with any email account regardless of location. Teleflip makes it even easier.

The email-to-text message and vise versa functionality available to all US mobile phone users is a very simple, fast and cheap way to communicate with people all over the world. I have used this function for over 8 years with my Sprint phone.

It is particularly useful when you want to communicate with people in other countries, but don’t feel like spending a lot of money on a voice call. For international texting, US wireless companies charge $0.20-$0.25 per message. Imagine being able to tell your friends overseas that they can email your phone for free and you will get the message anywhere in real time and that you can answer him (also for free if you have unlimited text) immediately or run to the nearest PC and call him using Skype or other free internet voice calling programs.

Teleflip has not worked 100% of the time, so I would not relay on it to conduct business or if you want to make sure the message gets to the mobile phone. The nice thing is that you will receive an email from Teleflip service with no subject and the email will body will read:
We're sorry we were unable to deliver your message via Teleflip. No more delivery attempts will be made. Included is a list of recipients and the reason your message could not be delivered.
Even though it is not always reliable, I still recommend the service to people.

One use I have found very useful for this capability is sending myself email reminders. For example, lets say I am in the middle of the street with no pen or paper and I wanted to remind myself to pay a bill when I get to the office….I simply compose a new text message and email it to my work email and I see it in my inbox when I get to the office.

Inversely, I sent my phone text messages with little reminders such as address of a restaurant, flight number information or other notes. For example, today I wanted to call my dentist as soon as I left the office, so I simply emailed the number to my phone and deleted it after I called. The alternatives, such as writing it on paper – I would have forgotten it in the office, or saving it to my phone address book – I call the dentist once in 6 months, I don’t want to clog up my address book with useless telephone numbers. Viva la text!

How to use this service?

The service is basically a 3-step process:

1. The person emailing the phone needs to compose a new email message and in the TO: field they will input the users number without dashes or brackets, after the number type the @teleflip.com (if you know the wireless service your friend uses you can add one of the @ email address listed below instead)
2. Leave the Subject field blank.
3. Type in the Message Body box the message, but limit it to 160 character, including spaces, I would recommend going even shorter to 120 characters.
4. Receive is able to reply to emails message, limited by the text message character limitation.

Example: If your friend’s number is 123-456-7890, you simple compose a new email to 1234567890@teleflip.com and you are good to go! No registering or permission needed. Your friend can reply directly to your email.

If you know the wireless carrier your friend uses: (this is more reliable than Teleflip’s service, but still…you need to know what carrier your friend has, and with number porting between carriers it is hard to be 100% sure you know who they use for their wireless sevice)
To email any Sprint subscriber in the USA, you need to validate that they are a Sprint sub (and not AT&T or other.) If their mobile number is 123-456-7890, you would simply type in the TO: field of your email 1234567890@messaging.sprintpcs.com, leave the subject empty and limit the amount of characters to 120-160.

For each carrier the gateway is as follows, example given with 123-456-7890 number since it is easy to remember that every phone in the USA has 10 digits:

AT&T: 1234567890@txt.att.net
Old AT&T (blue) customers: 1234567890@mmode.com
Verizon: 1234567890@vtext.com
Nextel: 1234567890@page.nextel.com
T-Mobile: 1234567890@tmomail.com
Sprint: 1234567890@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Cingular: 11234567890@mobile.mycingular.com need to add a 1 in front of number
US Cellular: 1234567890@email.uscc.net
Alltel: 1234567890@message.alltel.com
MetroPCS: 1234567890@mymetropcs.com

Pros:

• free service to communicate with people overseas anywhere in the world
• can be used anywhere mobile phone works
• SMS to a mobile phone overseas costs $0.20 per message, this is free anywhere in the world

Cons:

• Teleflip does not always work, so the receiving party may not get message
• if you are not using teleflip, you need to know what wireless carrier your friend uses
• English (characters) only

Check it out: www.teleflip.com

What's the damage? Free

Coverage area: USA on mobile phone, email from computer worldwide

Access requirements: Mobile phone and computer

ItsNearMe rating: 4 our of 5

Comments:

Aug 17, 2008 11:46 PM:

Your blog is interesting!

Keep up the good work!

-- Alex

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Posted by itsnearme on October 20, 2007 07:02 PM