Esendex Inbound Multipart Messaging Update

Most people who use SMS will know that a standard SMS message is limited to 160 characters (using a standard 7-bit character set). But most people will also know that mobile phones are capable of sending a message of more than this.

The phone does it by splitting the message into parts, and placing a header on each part that describes:

• how many total parts there are in the message


• which part this current segment is


• a reference so parts from different messages don't get mixed up

Esendex's outbound service has supported sending these long messages for more than a year, but at the moment we treat inbound message parts as separate messages.

We're currently working on an update that will cause these message parts to be reassembled into one message, so all parts (or however many parts we actually receive) will be displayed as 1 message in the Inbox.

So what is this going to affect? Well, if you use the website to view your inbox, or have your messages emailed to you, then this won't affect you at all--all you will see is a longer than usual message if a multipart message is sent to your account.

However, if you have written an application that retrieves your messages from your Inbox, or which receives direct messages through the Application Notification service, then this could potentially be a breaking change.

If you are expecting a message to be a maximum of 160 characters, you will need to modify your code and/or database tables to accept messages longer than this. If you need to apply a maximum length, then the limit of 1 Esendex inbound message will now be based on the total characters in the maximum number of parts allowed by the specification.

The maximum number of parts is stored in an unsigned byte starting at 1, which gives a potential for 254 parts(!). Each part can have 153 characters, which gives a technical maximum of 38,862 characters in an inbound message.

However, I seriously doubt any provider or phone manufacturer will allow anyone to send a 254 part message. I certainly know that phones have their own limits on the number of parts a handset can send.

As an example Esendex's outbound service limits you to sending 4 message parts, or a total of 612 characters.

A maximum of something like 1000 characters should probably handle most cases, but the potential is there for 10s of thousands of characters under the right circumstances.

This update is currently in development and will hopefully be going live in September sometime. I've been told an email will be sent around to API customers giving an official announcement, but you can get a head start on any changes you need to make right now.