No SMPP Connection with 48

[SimonB9178]

Hi all,

New user here to 48 and to date have loved the experience of swapping over. To date everything has gone smoothly and I have been waiting for that "catch" as such of a "cheap option". Sadly as I found out this evening that 48 do not offer a SMPP connection, so when I do online banking and want to add a new bill or person to pay I would normally have to enter a security code which Bank of Ireland will text me - which I can no longer receive from Bank of Ireland due to 48 not supporting a SMPP connection. So I ask myself do I get this security code by post (takes 3 days sometimes) or switch back to Three??? Has anyone else come across this problem and found a solution? 

One of my reasons for switching to 48, after the excellent value was the fact I could donate 5GB of data each month to the food cloud, helping the environment and feeding someone in need. This is a great idea, well done 48! The idea of having to receive more physical post for a silly code each time I want to add and pay someone online just seems like a waste of time & resources and a move away from better environmental impacts - digital code verus a paper version.

What are the solutions, change phone provider, bank, go snail mail, give up paying my bills (this one I like)? 48 are you listening?

I don't want to rag but also offer suggestions, such as;
Are 48 going to include a SMPP option in the future? If so at what cost? (I would pay for it).
Could there be an add-on option paid for each month or just when needed?
Are 48 planning to clearly advertise that their membership DO NOT have SMPP included before people like muggins here swaps over? Transparency is key to fighting those ill feelings brought on by those great "ah that's the catch" moments.

Thanks for listening to my silly rant and maybe someone else out there has come up against this small snag and has some enlightening inputs.  

Simon 
🙂

[dalyer]

I've never heard of SMPP but I know that I get all security texts from all service providers that I deal with including ptsb, revenue, WhatsApp, Google, duo mobile, Irish life etc etc

Hope this helps.

[dalyer]

SMPP doesn't seem to have anything to do with one time passwords sent by banks and other organisations using SMS...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Peer-to-Peer

[SimonB9178]

Hi there,

Cheers for the info. And good to hear that other sms verifications are working. I spoke with my bank and they claim the issues lies with my phone provider and 48's customer support say that the reason I can't get these texts from BOI is that they do not support this SMPP connection. It's seems odd but both parties seem to say the same thing.

[dalyer · Accepted solution]

Very strange.

As I say I get such "password" texts from all services that I use.

The ones that I mentioned above and lots more both here and abroad.

Unfortunately I don't use BoI so can't comment on them specifically.

Odd and frustrating that each party is blaming the other...

Maybe any other BoI users on 48 might comment here on their experience?

I would expect that if it was a more general issue then we would have heard about it here but I can't recall BoI users posting here saying that they had the same experience.

[SimonB9178]

Thanks for all the help anyways. And to be clear everything else with 48 has been great. Just this one snagging. Im ring the bank again today to see if they can somehow check their side again and see if it's not some issue on my account etc.

Anyways cheers 🙂

[SimonB9178]

So just off the phone from BOI again and they have explained that they use a SMPP service to send secure texts which a phone provider gets charged for, thus in my case 48 do not support this and thus I can not recieve these texts. It's pretty clean cut to me. BOI customers may have issues with 48 and this, I would love to hear if others are having this issue...

[dalyer]

This (4 year old) post regarding Virgin Media and SMPP on boards.ie looks relevant here but I would have thought that such issues would have been sorted out at this stage with all providers...

https://www.boards.ie/ttfpost/101689673

[SimonB9178]

Hi Dalyer,

Great find.

I can confirm from 48 customer service the following:

"Thank you for your patience, If the bank in question use an SMPP connection to send Texts to their customers, then these would not work for 48Months subs as 48 has no agreement with any SMPP providers. Same was informed to you yesterday by the agent and in near future if we support SMPP then it would be mentioned on the website as well. As we have forwarded this as the feedback to the relevant team"

Thus I see this as an issues that lies with 48 and also the lack of up front commication of this before joining. The boards.ie thread you find does highlight some interesting grounds...see below:

"The grounds for complaint to ComReg remain the same - VM are providing a restricted SMS service without disclosing that fact up front, and by only peering with a single favoured SMS aggregator they are fragmenting the A2P SMS market and may be violating net neutrality regulations. All these practices harm consumers and ComReg should intervene and enforce adherence to existing consumer and telecommunications law. Many banks are now using A2P SMS messages for fraud detection - any suspicious transaction (e.g. an online purchase with a new/unknown merchant) results in an SMS message being sent which must be positively confirmed within a certain time period to allow the transaction to go through. If these SMS messages are dropped, then the transaction will fail, and this may cause great inconvenience to a customer. Customers have a reasonable expectation that SMS messages from Ireland's largest banks will be delivered and not dropped - thus the harm is significant and a remedy should be quickly imposed."

In summary, I could not be arsed go through hoops and have resigned that 48 will likely not take on my feedback nor upgrade it's service to include the SMPP any time soon. As I find everything else with 48 good I will stick with them for the short term and move to another provider in the future as I just can't be bother wating days for a code to be posted from BOI to me.

First world problems but life goes on!

Cheers for the chats!

🙂

[dalyer]

I guess that all the providers that I use that send password/PIN texts are not using SMPP so?

Strange though given that that boards thread suggests that PTSB are or were and I have no problem getting their texts.