

Twilio Adds Low-Cost, Two-Way MMS Picture Messaging to Its API Cloud - matts9581
http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/18/twilio-adds-low-cost-two-way-mms-picture-messaging-to-its-api-cloud/

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sinak
This isn't related to the MMS announcement, but I'd like to give Twilio big,
big props for being one of the most developer and technology-friendly
companies out there.

Not only is their API easy to use, constantly improved, and impeccably
supported, but over the course of the last year, they've donated thousands of
dollars worth of free credit to technology activists including the EFF,
Taskforce.is, and Fight for the Future. They've even modified their privacy
policy to make it possible for my team at EFF to use Twilio on campaigns we
run.

Rob Spectre, who's replying to comments in this thread, has been amazing too -
offering hands-on support when we run big campaigns like The Day We Fight Back
and last week's Battle for the Net.

Thanks to all the Twilio team. You rock.

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josh2600
This is an amazing biz dev achievement. Twilio seems to be getting closer to
aggregating all of the hard stuff in telco land every day.

It's hard to overstate just how hard this is to do. This isn't as simple as
going to an aggregator and getting SMS done, MMS has been one of the last
bastions of exerted carrier influence and it's slowly being democratized. This
is the first time I can recall someone getting this level of access to MMS
services within operators (please correct me if I'm wrong).

~~~
RobSpectre
Much obliged Josh. Took a while, but we're having a lot of fun with it.

Text a pic of yourself to (646) 846-8238 - you should get a sweet mustache
back.

~~~
megrimlock
Old unit testing habits compelled me to txt a photo that already has a
mustache. Result? Better mustache. Test passed.

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sologoub
Looking on the site, I see SMS/MMS support on all LOCAL US/Canadian numbers,
but TFNs remain SMS-only. Just curious, any plans to add MMS to toll free
numbers?

PS: still amazed that you got SMS working on TFNs, though I guess that's more
of the SMS/800 (the organization charged with managing TFNs in North America,
not to be confused with SMS messaging...)

~~~
patio11
SMS works on toll-free numbers now?! That just made my day.

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baghali
Well, all the kudos should go to Bandwidth.com the primary carrier of of
Twilio, Plivo, Google Voice, etc ...

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joshpadnick
Can you elaborate on the relationship between Twilio and Bandwidth.com? I
actually have very little understanding of what happens once Twilio receives
an API request.

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baghali
Bandwidth.com being a wholesale carrier of VoIP services is the primary
carrier for Twilio, Plivo, Google Voice, etc...

Bandwidth delivers SMS over SMPP. Initially the MMS launch was due for mid
October, seems they launched it ahead of time.

In the following weeks you'll see lots of different providers announcing their
MMS capability.

Bandwidth should get the credit for their brilliant work.

~~~
RobSpectre
Bandwidth are indeed a bunch of bright folks that do good work and we work
with them on a number of products, but to be clear we are not reselling their
messaging.

Lot of effort by a large crew of committed developers and the helpful
participation of our carrier partners are what brought Twilio MMS to market on
US phone numbers. Were MMS as easy as wrapping another product in a HTTP
request, I imagine it would be a more common offering.

Want to make sure the effort of the Twilio engineering crew is given its due.

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Vivtek
Man, if they'd just add fax they'd have basically every possible telephonic
service there is.

~~~
zrail
Just FYI, there's a fax API service similar to Twilio already named Phaxio[1].
Not affiliated, just a fan[2].

[1]: [https://www.phaxio.com](https://www.phaxio.com)

[2]: [https://www.petekeen.net/command-line-
faxing](https://www.petekeen.net/command-line-faxing)

~~~
Vivtek
Hey - thanks! I've been using faxaway for years with their email interface,
but this is handier. But I'd still like to be able to handle voicemail and
incoming fax on the same number and _nobody_ can give me that yet. (As far as
I know.)

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nathancahill
Now if we could just get Google Voice to support it, that would be awesome.

~~~
jewel
It seems like with the hangouts/google voice merger on android that it does
now support it, but I haven't tested myself personally to see.

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aroch
I've played wit Twilio and have used it to extend some of the hooks I
previously had in IFTTT. Additionally I've been toying with porting my number
out of Google Voice for compatibility (ie. no MMS) and privacy reasons. My
question is, how hard would it be to build your own personal Google Voice like
service around the twilio API, or has anyone done this?

~~~
zrail
I set up a quick and dirty version of GV with one of their provided
Twimlets[1]. All it does is record a message, transcribe it, then send the
results to my email address. My wife and I used this, for example, when
looking for a mortgage loan (they never. stop. calling.)

I've thought long and hard about building something more complicated but I was
always sort of stopped by the lack of MMS and my (apparently faulty)
understanding of how their Caller ID works[2]. Not anymore!

[1]:
[https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/voicemail](https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/voicemail)

[2]: Previously I had thought you could only set registered numbers as caller
ID, but turns out if you dial out while processing an incoming call you can
set the caller ID as the incoming number. See here:
[https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/dial#attributes-
caller...](https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/dial#attributes-caller-id)

~~~
mmastrac
I did the same thing: I wanted something like Google Voice, but it was
impossible to make it work here in Canada. I also have a tiny little HTML page
you can use to retrieve your voicemail and transcriptions:

[https://github.com/mmastrac/snippets/tree/gh-
pages/voicemail](https://github.com/mmastrac/snippets/tree/gh-pages/voicemail)

Obviously you'd want to host that yourself somewhere private and possibly
hard-code the keys.

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blocke
Twilio's test MMS (or any Twilio SMS) messages have never worked for me on the
AT&T and Tmobile MVNO Straight Talk which uses Tracfone's MMS servers. I'd be
curious what other MVNOs lurking about in the US are not handled by this. Does
Cricket work?

~~~
RobSpectre
Would love to learn more about why these messages are failing for you. Reckon
you could shoot us some of the failed SmsSids to help@twilio.com? I'd be much
obliged.

~~~
blocke
I'm not using the API only the "see for yourself" link on the MMS page at
[https://www.twilio.com/mms](https://www.twilio.com/mms).

Webpage says it's sent but nothing ever arrives to the phone. I'll send an
email to help@twilio.com with my phone number if someone over there wants to
try a few test sends for debug info.

As a side note I just tested using the SMS page and it seems to work now. When
I last tried it a couple months ago when swapping SIMs and trying to test SMS
it silently failed with both sets of phone numbers and SIM Cards while every
other SMS source I could try worked fine. That appears to not be an issue
anymore so it's just MMS.

MMS to and from the phone works fine with Verizon and AT&T cellphones so I'd
imagine there is some plumbing somewhere going wrong in my case.

Thanks.

~~~
timewasted
I just tried this as well using my AT&T Straight Talk phone number, and the
result was the same (message reports being sent, but never shows up on my
end).

I'll also fire off an email so that you can have at least two numbers to test
with.

~~~
RobSpectre
Thank you!

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teyc
Can someone explain a little bit more? I think I've been spoilt rotten by the
web API world.

Don't telcos provide MMS gateway like how they provide SMS gateways? What is
actually happening under the hood here?

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iconicaapl
Lots actually. MMS is hard - multiple devices with no consistency, different
interconnect gateways that can mangle messages along the way. An easy to use,
reliable and pervasive MMS gateway isn't as easy to implement as some might
think and the carriers haven't made it a priority. In fact the US carriers
completely messed up their early MMS implementations with Washington-style
regulation that made the user experience beyond horrible. Here's hoping Twilio
makes some progress with this and I wish them much success.

EDIT: I realized that I didn't actually answer your question. MMS can be
supported by carriers in different ways but the most typical interface is MM7
which is SOAP over HTTP. There are many MM7 gateway vendors and they all
handle MIME boundaries, payloads, transcoding, etc different - subtle
differences, but enough to make testing against a large matrix of devices
very, very hard.

~~~
fletchowns
Interesting, I had no idea it was so complex. What could have been done
differently way back when to avoid such a mess?

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cmalpeli
Does this apply to all Twilio numbers, or just short codes?

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hox
All US Twilio numbers.

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spountzy
Someone knows, when it would be available in Europe? Is there any information
available?

