FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQS)

Sender Names allow you to set your business brand as the Sender ID your customers see when they receive your messages. Sender Names are limited to 11 alphanumeric characters and must adhere to the following guidelines:

• P2P Messages and International Numbers are strictly not allowed.
• Spam and Scam messages are strictly not allowed.
• Numeric Sender ID's are not allowed.
• Sender ID's containing the words "TEST", “MESSAGE” and “SMS”, along with all of its permutations (e.g. TESTING, TEST123, ABCTEST, MSG, SMS, etc.) are not allowed, unless approved through the Sender ID approval form.
• Sender ID's that portrays other networks "SMART", "SUN", “GLOBE” along with all of its permutations (e.g. SMARTMONEY, SUNCELL, SMARTLIVE, SMARTLOAD, etc.) are not allowed.
• Any sender names related to or used for sending messages containing: Adult Content, Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling, Elections, Campaigns, Tobacco

Sender Names take up to 5 business days to approve.

Possible reasons include:

• The account is not associated with a business, and/or the sender name has been deemed not for business use
• A valid sample message was not submitted -- the sample message needs to reflect the messages you will send with the sender name (i.e not descriptive, not a “test”)
• The Sender Name submitted is clearly for the purposes of testing
• Violates Telco and/or Network guidelines

The first Sender Name is free but additional sender names are billed at 200 credits per month or 2,0000 credits per year.

Email payments@semaphore.co with the subject, “Bank Deposit”. Please include the number of credits you wish to purchase. Credits will be applied to your account once you send us a soft copy of your deposit slip. You can use our payments page to calculate how much you will need to deposit.

Our bank account details are:

Email payments@semaphore.co with the subject, “OR Request”. Please include the date transaction was created, and total amount paid, and your official company name. We will email you a soft copy (and the hard copy through snail mail if address is provided).

Just like on your phone, each SMS message is 160 bytes and costs 1 credit. Each credit is P0.50 exclusive of VAT. We do support longer messages and they are billed as follows:

• When a long text message is segmented into multiple physical SMS messages, a special header is added to each physical SMS message so that the receiving client knows that it is a multipart SMS message that must be reassembled by the client. These headers are known as segmentation or concatenation headers. 6 bytes (8-bits each) are required for these concatenation headers in each physical SMS message.
• If a message is longer than 160 characters, this header is used to connect the segments. This character is 6 bytes long so the calculation for longer messages is the ceiling of (messageLength/153). The term "ceiling" means the next highest whole integer. So for example if you send a message of 450 bytes, the message length divided by 153 is 2.9411 and the next highest whole number is 3, so the cost for that message is 3 credits.

This tool allows you to send large batches messages even if you don’t know how to code. All you have to do is follow the format of the example CSV to specify what your recipients’ numbers and the messages you’d like to send to each of them.

In 2017, we updated our platform and may have asked you to modify your end point to call https://beta.semaphore.co/api/v4/messages. After the official launch of our new platform, the endpoint will be https://api.semaphore.co/api/v4/messages, but https://beta.semaphore.co/api/v4/messages will still work and you don’t need to make any changes. :)

Messages sent are typically received within 2-3 minutes of sending, however some issues can prevent successful delivery of messages. Please see the checklist below:

• Sender Name - If you are using a custom Sender Name please ensure the Sender Name is approved. If in doubt, try sending the same message using SEMAPHORE as a Sender Name.
• Phone Number - Please make sure the phone number you are sending to is a valid phone, the phone is turned on, the phone has a connection to the network. When specifying a phone number please make sure it is formatted either as: 9998887777, 09998887777 or 639998887777
• Message Content - Make sure your messages do not begin with the word "test" as these messages are sliently ignored by the network.

Right now we don't support this feature but it will be in our next release.