If you send out a message and the carrier supports delivery reports, then delivery reports will automatically be added to the online reporting system. It is important to note that delivery reports are not received instantly. They can be received anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours or even days after your messages go out.
DELIVERY STATUSES & DESCRIPTIONS:
Delivered
Delivered simply means that the SMS was delivered to the handset. If it is a premium message, this means billing was successful.
Failed
Failed means that the SMS did not reach the handset due to a temporary error. These errors include the end user being outside of service or if their phone was off.
Rejected
Rejected means that the SMS did not reach the handset due to a more permanent error. For example, if the phone number was invalid, on a different network or blacklisted.
N/A
Unfortunately, not all carriers provide delivery reports for standard rate messages. If you see an "N/A" it simply means that the message was passed along to the carrier without a problem, but unfortunately, we cannot confirm that the message was passed from the carrier to the end user. The only reason that a message with this delivery report would not actually reach the end users handset would be an issue with the carriers service.
Undeliverable
The message status 'Undeliverable' means that message delivery failed, but there is no specific reason from carrier. However, one of the following may be the cause:
This is prepaid account which is currently out of credit
The subscriber doesn't have an SMS plan that would allow to receive text messages over shortcode
In either case, it is up to handset user to communicate with the carrier resolve the issue.
Account De-Activated On Network
These numbers may have been removed from the deactivation list on the carrier side. Due to a process outlined by the carriers we are contractually obligated to keep Verizon numbers on the deactivation list for 30 days and Sprint numbers for 22 days. After this time period they will automatically come off.
If the message can be delivered through another aggregator, we cannot speak of the policies that the other aggregators abide to (or fail to abide to) with the carriers regarding this however.
Also, we are given no additional information as to why numbers are put on a deactivation list, this would be up to the owner of the handset to determine with their carrier. It could be that the user ported their number from another carrier to Sprint or Verizon, or has ported their number from Sprint or Verizon to another carrier.
Message Expired
The status 'Message Expired' means that the carrier could not deliver the message to the recipient within their allotted time frame. All carriers have set time frames during which they make repeated attempts to send the message to the recipient. However, if the recipient's device is switched off or out of its coverage area during this period of repeated delivery attempts, the message expires and fails. Carriers do not provide us with their delivery schedules.
Subscriber Out Of Coverage
Subscriber out of coverage means that the handheld device that the message is being sent has not connected to the carriers network in a while or does not have roaming enabled. At this point, if the carrier is unable to deliver the SMS message, then the message is dropped and carrier network responds back with the status of Subscriber out of coverage. We are currently working with the aggregators based on status of Subscriber out of coverage to get a better understanding of the status message.
Enroute
If the message was just sent, then the message will likely show as 'Enroute' for as long as 5 minutes, after which we will begin to query the carrier about the message's delivery status. We will continue to query the carrier as to the message's delivery status for up to 24 hours. If the message shows as 'Enroute' after the 5 minute period has expired, it was likely delivered to the recipient but the carrier failed to correctly notify us about the message's final delivery status.
Some carriers, such as Telus of Canada, do not support message delivery updates and as a result, messages sent to this carrier will always show 'Enroute.' International endpoints and carriers do not provide reliable message delivery statuses and we have noted issues with message delivery statuses at times with Sprint, Verizon and Alltel.
If none of the above seems to fit the circumstances of the message status then feel free to contact support and we can look further into the matter for you. To aid us in determining the message delivery status, please provide the following information:
The approximate date,
The time when the message was sent
The time zone the message was sent from
The phone number
The content of the message