How to send a free SMS from your PC - USA only!

Once upon a time you could send an email to cell-phone-number@teleflip.com and the message would reach its destination.

But alas that doesn't work anymore.

But there is still a way - albeit slightly more cumbersome - to achieve this result.

By the way if you know a more elegant way to do this please let me know!

All carriers (I think) have a service to receive SMS messages from email. So if you send an email to them all, you will definitely get a few error messages but at least one will reach your desired destination.

There are THREE stages.

1.

Copy this list of all the carriers into a WORD document (or text editor of your choice with the cut and paste function)

Xx@vtext.com, Xx@txt.att.net, Xx@messaging.sprintpcs.com, Xx@tmomail.net, Xx@messaging.nextel.com, Xx@cingularme.com

2.

In the "find and replace" function enter "Xx" as above in the "find" window and the cell phone number you want to reach in the "replace" window.

NOW you have a list of all the carriers with the cell phone number before the "@"

e.g.

Cell.number.you.want@vtext.com, Cell.number.you.want@txt.att.net, Cell.number.you.want@messaging.sprintpcs.com, Cell.number.you.want@tmomail.net, Cell.number.you.want@messaging.nextel.com, Cell.number.you.want@cingularme.com

3.

Paste the list into the "To" line in an email, compose your email (keep it short, its an SMS!) and hit SEND.

This method is fool proof.

Good luck!

Jason

P.S. Google say they will be adding a new feature to Labs which will let you "send SMS text messages right from Gmail."

It was pulled because it wasn't working properly. If it gets rolled out AND I try it and find that it works better than the method I've discussed here, I will update the blog.

P.S. There are companies which claim they can tell you which service provider the number you want to contact uses, but seeing as numbers are no longer tied to carriers - remember you can keep your number when you change carriers - the system can't be perfect. At best it can tell you the ORIGINAL carrier, but that may or may not be the person's CURRENT carrier.

While this list is for the USA only, you can probably make a similar list for any country and then do all the same things.