Country specific emergency numbers. - twilio

Is it possible to use Twilio to call country specific emergency numbers. I already have the specific numbers (for each country) in my DB. My question is if I can use the sip-trunking emergency calling for dialing emergency numbers in other countries.

Twilio developer evangelist here.
You can place emergency number calls in some situations but there are limitations. you can read more about it here.
In summary, though, to enable emergency calling on a Twilio number you need to do the following:
Configure, validate and associate an address with your Twilio number (from the Numbers tab of your Trunk)
Enable Emergency Calling on that number
Emergency calls (911) will only be routed when Twilio Numbers enabled for Emergency Calling are used as the Caller-ID (SIP From: header). Emergency calls from any other number will be rejected.

Related

Does Twilio allow people to send a text message to a twilio account free of charge?

I was wondering if its possible to allow people to text to a twilio number without charging them sms charges by their carrier? So, for each text message that is sent to a twilio phone number, I will cover the cost. Basically, free or charge text messaging for users to a specific twilio number.
Twilio developer evangelist here.
We support incoming SMS messages on toll free numbers in certain countries, so yes!
I recommend opening up the advanced search in the phone number console and checking the boxes for toll free and SMS.

Twilio Trial SMS 'from' number different from the assigned number

I have got a trial account on Twilio with a free number. When I send an SMS through the Rest API I do receive the SMS, but from a different number than the one I have been assigned.
Is this so because of the trial? Will it be fixed when I upgrade my account?
I need the users to be able to reply back with the message to the same number they received the SMS from.
Twilio developer evangelist here.
My guess is that you are sending messages to a country that doesn't support maintaining the original sender ID. I see from your profile that you're from Pakistan, you can check out the guidelines for sending SMS to Pakistan here.
As you can see from the support table, we can't guarantee that your Long Code (that is the phone number) sender ID is preserved and Two Way SMS is not supported.
So, this is not due to your trial account, but limitations with sending SMS messages into Pakistan.

How to make a country available on Twilio?

What should be done to add a new country to twilio numbers? Colombia is not available although many other Latin American countries are...
Twilio developer evangelist here.
From the bottom of our page which lists which countries in which Twilio has numbers:
Twilio is in the process of providing phone numbers in more countries as quickly as we can. Each country has different regulations regarding the purchase and sale of telephone numbers, so we are not able to provide a timeline on when numbers in a specific country will be available.
I will note that while you don't get the local number you are still able to send messages to and receive messages from Colombian numbers using Twilio numbers from other countries. Perhaps this could help you?

Can I send SMS text messages using all the different phone numbers of my US based users?

All my users are in the United States. When someone signs up on my website they enter their cell phone number. Can I use the user's own cell phone number to send a SMS text message via twilio?
I was reading the twilio documentation about subaccounts and I couldn't determine if this was possible or not. They make it sound like you can only send texts using a narrow range of phone numbers.
Twilio evangelist here.
Today, you can only send text messages from phone numbers you've provisioned from Twilio. We've got a FAQ article that describes why.
You can make phone calls from either a Twilio provisioned phone number, or a verified phone number.
Hope that helps.

What is the deal with Twilio and International SMS?

I've been working with Twilio to program SMS functionality on my app, and it seems that Twilio works best with US numbers and not so well with international numbers. I've done some research and have learned about an August 16th fiasco that resulted inthe SMS functionality being shut off by Twilio. Also through testing I have learned that some international carriers are not supported by Twilio. So some of my friends abroad aren't receiving my Twilio SMS messages.
Can anyone provide further insight into this issue? Is international SMS well supported by Twilio? If not, how many carriers and which ones ARE supported? Finally is there a better SMS service provider that can guarantee full support for all if not the more prevalent carriers internationally?
Thanks for the support everyone and any clarification on this issue.
Good questions all - this information can be kind of hard to find on our website right now. If I'm picking up what you're putting down correctly, you're curious what kind of availability Twilio SMS has internationally and what the deliverability is like.
The matrix on what kind of Twilio service is available where can get a little complicated (which we have here a little buried in our FAQ: http://www.twilio.com/help/faq/phone-numbers/which-countries-does-twilio-have-phone-numbers-in-and-what-are-their-capabilities), but for SMS it breaks down like this:
Twilio phone numbers that can send and receive SMS are available in the US, Canada and the UK.
US and Canadian numbers can send and receive to 190 countries to over 1,000 carriers. To see what the pricing for each country and carrier per message, check out this page: https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing
UK numbers can currently send and receive SMS reliably within the UK. As the numbers themselves are geographic, some international carriers do not allow messages to be sent or received to them. This might be a possible root cause for some of the deliverability issues you experienced.
All other phone numbers we make available in other countries only have support for Twilio Voice - these numbers cannot send or receive SMS at all.
I'm not aware of any SMS related incident on 16 August, though we did have intermittent service interruption the week before on 9 August lasting a little under 90 minutes. For future reference, we communicate all our service issues on an independently hosted status board here: http://status.twilio.com/ Any issue, root cause and resolution are posted there for your review.
Finally, if you have a specific question about a number, deliverability to a particular carrier or handset, or would just like to share a cool hack, I definitely encourage you to engage one-on-one with our support crew at help#twilio.com or come meet one of my fellow developer evangelists when you're out at a programming event. We'd love to see what you're working on and if there is anything we can do to help.
Thanks Kev!
Rob - devangel at Twilio
I have a slightly different issue, but my discussion of the problem addresses some of the questions here. In essence, if you want to SMS internationally without upgrading, your limitation is that you can only text to numbers that have been manually verified through this website. You have to log in, use a US phone number, and then "Verify" your international numbers. By upgrading your account you no longer have to manually verify each number.
Twilio is very strong in USA, however, you may try to use several SMS suppliers for delivery of your messages internationally. Also, if you would like to test a delivery of your messages to a certain country where you do not have a testing mobile phone number, you can send it on telqtest.com testing numbers.

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