Since the beginning, we at Plivo have invested in our infrastructure because we know that a quality backbone is key to providing you and your customers with a great user experience. Today, we’re excited to announce two enhancements to our infrastructure:

• New data center locations in South America (Brazil) and US-West (Northern California)
• Improvements in our global network and voice routing algorithm

These improvements will help improve voice call quality by decreasing audio latency and reducing distortion, garbled speech, and intermittent pauses.

Best of all, we’ve already enabled these improvements for you at no extra charge.

New data center locations

We analyze and optimize for data center locations that positively impact inter- and intra-region connectivity. This is why we’ve added two new data center locations: one in São Paulo, Brazil, to handle our growing South America traffic and another in Northern California to facilitate better connections in North America from the West Coast. These new data center locations enable us to provide optimized in-region connectivity with customers and carrier peering hubs.

Improvements in global network and voice routing algorithms

To achieve low latency on voice calls, we’ve made optimizations to help us route calls more efficiently.

To better illustrate how our optimizations have made positive impacts at every step, here’s an example of a call flow on Plivo’s network. Consider a WebRTC call dialing from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a friend in New Jersey, United States. Upon dialing, the WebRTC application connects the caller to the nearest Plivo voice data center in São Paulo. Plivo then routes the call to the Plivo voice data center closest to the destination, which in this case is in Virginia. After that, the call is connected to a local US carrier in New York and then routed to the receiver in New Jersey.

Lower edge latency from customer locations for SIP, WebRTC, and Mobile SDK-based endpoints

We’ve made improvements in the underlying infrastructure that helps your SIP, WebRTC, and Mobile SDK-based endpoints connect to our nearest in-region data centers around the world. We’ve reduced latency between the customer location and Plivo data centers to less than 100ms, which reduces voice call quality issues.

Here are examples of average ping times between customer locations and our nearest data centers:

Optimized global routing

We route calls through the nearest network of strategically located data centers worldwide, which lowers inter-region latency and improves call audio quality. This optimized routing means fewer dropped packets, less jitter, and less crosstalk, which is caused by long delays in the time a spoken word needs to travel to the receiver’s ear.

Optimized intra-region connectivity

After detailed analysis of our voice traffic, we found that more than 25% of calls on our infrastructure traverse multiple regions, so we improved routing between our data center locations to optimize for inter- and intra-region connectivity. We’ve seen the delta in latency reduced significantly, which directly impacts jitter (broken audio) on voice calls. We now have data centers in:

• South America (São Paulo, Brazil) — New
• US-West (Northern California) — New
• US-East (Virginia) — Updated
• Europe (Frankfurt, Germany) — Updated
• Asia (Singapore) — Updated
• Australia (Sydney)

Faster connectivity to carrier peering hubs

To guarantee high quality of service, Plivo peers with Tier 1 carriers around the world with latency less than 20ms at major hubs, which reduces the amount of time needed to connect directly to carriers. To lower the latency between our data centers and carrier peering hubs, we’ve developed algorithms to evaluate and connect to the nearest peering hubs based on each call.

Direct carrier connectivity and redundancy

Our carrier team has been working hard to make more local in-country carriers available to our networks. Increasing carrier availability and quality by providing multiple carriers in every country also improves connectivity between the destination carrier and the destination.

Of course, not all carriers are created equal, which is why we test every carrier on Plivo’s network for low post-dial delay (PDD), guaranteed features such as CLI and DTMF, and high mean opinion score (MOS). We also ensure that our networks connect to a minimum of two carriers in each country. This redundancy safeguards against single points of failure. In the event of a carrier failure, our infrastructure will automatically load balance and route traffic to more reliable carriers within the same region. We currently work with more than 100 in-county carriers globally to ensure that our network is always optimized, and we’re constantly adding more carriers to our network.

What do these improvements mean for you and your customers?

At Plivo, we understand that quality is at the core of any great product. High quality of service not only gives you access to clear voice quality, it also helps your business deliver the same level of quality to your customers.

You can now enable two-way SMS text messaging on all Plivo toll-free phone numbers in the United States.

Plivo delivers text messages with the lowest latency, highest delivery rates, and most affordable prices in the market. Our toll-free phone numbers use the same powerful SMS API as our SMS long codes and SMS short codes. It’s easy to create SMS campaigns on your existing voice-enabled toll-free phone numbers without migrating subscribers to a new phone number.

Toll-free SMS is an excellent alternative for A2P (application-to-person) traffic. Any business can now send A2P text messages on any toll-free phone number in the US. You can instantly provision a Plivo toll-free number, and enabling a phone numbers for SMS is easy. Instead of waiting months for a SMS short code to be enabled, you can start sending toll-free messages within 48 hours.

Here’s how short codes and toll-free, our two A2P SMS phone number offerings in the United States, compare:

When you want to transfer a phone number from one carrier to another, what happens? Number portability seems like a simple process, allowing you to retain the same phone number while switching service providers without experiencing service disruptions, but it’s surprisingly complex for regulatory reasons. The current process was put in place by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to ensure that phone number ownership is properly validated before carrier changes. The process is overseen by the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC), the administrative body of the FCC that facilitates portability for local numbers within the United States and Canada.

One of the most common questions we get about number porting is “how long will it take?” In most cases, porting a phone number can be completed within 10 business days of submitting an application. For more complicated ports that require custom routing, it can take 15–20 business days — though this timeline may vary between service providers. If there are any issues at any step, however, you may be requested to resubmit your application, which can double the amount of time needed.

Here are a few tips on what you can do to ensure that your porting application is not held up or rejected.

What happens during the phone number porting process?

Submitting a porting request sets off a flurry of communication between your current and new carrier. The process is subject to delays due to the complexity of the checks and validations required to prevent tampering, fraud, and illegal phone number transfers before the relatively straightforward technical porting takes place.

The process has four main phases: eligibility, application, validation, and porting. In the first three phases you can undertake certain activities to help speed up your application or prevent it from being delayed.

1. Eligibility

Process

Before you initiate the number porting process, check with your new carrier as to whether the phone numbers you want to port are eligible. The portability of phone numbers differs among countries and depends on the type of phone number and region you are porting into and out of. These limitations may be regulatory or technical.

If a phone number is not portable, you can’t switch it to another service provider. In that case, you’ll need to plan for a transition to a new phone number and ensure that your subscriber base is informed in advance.

Things you can do to ensure that your request doesn’t get rejected

How you submit a portability request varies from carrier to carrier. Requests are often made through a dedicated porting portal. If your new carrier doesn’t have one, raise a portability verification request to their support team.

During this early stage, you should consider the costs associated with porting out of your current carrier and into your new one. Within the US and Canada, most carriers charge port-out and port-in fees per phone number, both of which must be paid before the porting can be initiated.

Here’s a checklist to follow before you submit a porting application to ensure that your request doesn’t get rejected by your current or new carrier.

• Check porting eligibility of new carrier account: Check that the account you have with your new carrier allows for number porting. In some instances, you may have to upgrade from a trial account to a full account.
• Pay porting and phone number rental fees to new carrier: Typically (especially in US and Canada), porting and phone number rental fees are required by all carriers. Play it safe by ensuring that your new carrier account has enough of a balance to cover the phone number rental and porting fees associated with the newly ported phone numbers.
• Ask the new carrier about credit checks: If you’re porting over many phone numbers or require a post-paid payment plan with your new carrier, you may be subject to a credit check. Do this before submitting your application.
• Pay porting fees and any outstanding payments due to current carrier: Ensure that there are no outstanding payments due with your current carrier, including termination, port-out, and prior usage fees. Outstanding charges may lead your current carrier to reject the porting request.
• Activate all phone numbers with current carrier: Check with your current carrier that the phone numbers you want to port are active and in service during the entire porting process. Any service interruption during this process will lead to the cancellation of the port.
• Cancel all conflicting service requests: Having another service request pending with the current carrier may lead to a rejection. Request that your current carrier suspend all conflicting service requests so that the porting request can be processed.

2. Application

Process

Once the new operator confirms your phone numbers’ eligibility for porting, you can submit your porting request to the new operator. That means presenting validation documents to the new service provider so that they can contact your existing operator to release your phone numbers. This typically requires a signed Letter of Authorization (LOA), a Customer Service Record (CSR) or recent invoice, and the wireless account PIN or passcode if you’re making a wireless port.

Things you can do to ensure that your request doesn’t get rejected

Phone number validation is important, as phone numbers can be attached to large customer bases and privacy can be a serious concern. You must find out exactly what your new carrier is requesting and what your current carrier has on file regarding your account and your phone numbers. If you’re unsure, request the information from your current carrier before you submit the application. Here are specific things you should pay attention to:

• Request application templates: Ask your new carrier for templates of their required documents, to ensure that your application adheres to their standards. Every carrier has their own set of documents and standards.
• Match all the information provided: Ensure that all the documents you provide have the same names, addresses, and signatures, and that they match what your current provider has on file. If you’re unsure, request this information from your current carrier.
• Match account number to phone numbers: Ensure that the account number of all of the associated phone numbers in your porting request matches the account number your current carrier has on file.
• Use a valid BTN: When the billing telephone number (BTN) is used as a master number to identify your account with your current carrier, ensure that it matches the one on file with your current carrier.
• Authorize the correct contact: Make sure that the person authorized to make changes on the account is the same person indicated on the porting request, and that they signed the LOA. If you’re unsure who it is, ask your current carrier.
• Use the correct wireless PIN/passcode: The PIN provided for a wireless phone number must match the one on file with your current carrier. You can obtain the PIN from your current carrier.

3. Validation

Process

After you file the porting application, the new operator will communicate with your current service provider to validate that the organization requesting the port is indeed the owner of the phone numbers. More specifically, the new carrier provides all of your validation documents to your current service provider, which validates it if all the information matches what’s in your current carrier’s database. At that time, the current carrier sends a confirmation to your new operator along with a Firm Order Confirmation (FOC) date — the date that the new operator can port the phone number.

Things you can do to speed things up

Even though you have no control over the FOC date, you may be able to request a specific activation date (sometime after the FOC date) for the ported phone numbers. Typically, if there are no issues with your application documents, then your current carrier can confirm your ownership within a few business days. However, you can notify your current carrier of the port-out request to ensure that the request came through and ask if they can prioritize your request.

4. Porting

The technical aspect of porting takes milliseconds to complete and involves routing updates in the systems of both your current and new carriers. This phase should not cause any service disruptions, as your current service provider should deactivate service only after porting is complete with the new carrier. There’s not much variance in this part of the porting process. Once porting is complete, test all of your newly ported phone numbers to ensure that they’re working properly.

Successful phone number porting

The phone number porting process might seem daunting at first, but once you successfully complete your first porting request, all subsequent applications are just duplications of the first. Since porting is a highly regulated affair in North America, carriers must be extra careful with new porting requests from customers they are unfamiliar with, so ensure that all of your information is correct before you submit your application.

Most people depend on mobile devices to function in their daily lives, so it has become imperative for companies to evolve from desktop to mobile-first strategies. From marketing promotions to notifications, people demand fast, convenient communication. By integrating application-to-person (A2P) messaging into your business, you can reach customers directly with real-time alerts and receive instant feedback on products and services. This post focuses on the basics of A2P SMS text messaging and the common types of applications for your business.

What is A2P SMS?

A2P SMS is text messaging between an application and an individual. It typically involves automated content sent by an organization or business to a subscriber. A2P is commonly used for confirmations, alerts, marketing campaigns, and two-factor authentication (2FA).

A2P SMS is used so widely that it has become part of people’s everyday experience without them knowing it. For example, a store could send an A2P SMS to notify shoppers of a holiday sale. Customers can then log in to the store’s online shopping portal by using a security code sent to their mobile device. Some establishments even accept payment via SMS, which may be confirmed using A2P messaging sent from an online portal. To deter credit card fraud, a consumer’s bank can send a notification of their purchase instantly upon the completion of a transaction.

A2P messaging is a direct contrast to peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging, which is communication between two individuals and typically involves one-on-one conversations. P2P communication use cases include group messaging applications, ride-hailing logistics, and dating apps.

Restrictions on A2P and P2P usage vary between countries, so it’s best to check with your service provider regarding regulations within countries that you would like to send A2P campaigns. In the United States and Canada, pro-consumer regulations have set strict guidelines and limitations on how companies can send A2P traffic in an attempt to protect consumers from unsolicited messages and minimize messaging spam. Only P2P messages can be sent over long codes (regular 10-digit phone numbers), while A2P traffic can only be sent over SMS short codes or toll-free SMS phone numbers. [Editor’s note 2021: This is changing.]

Short codes are special five- to six-digit phone numbers specially procured for businesses to send A2P traffic. Toll-free SMS phone numbers are simply toll-free phone numbers that have been SMS-enabled. Both short codes and toll-free numbers require special validation processes to ensure that only reputable businesses with legitimate use cases are approved, and that businesses are responsible with the purpose of sending their customers messages. Violations of SMS regulations can lead to cessation of entire SMS campaigns and suspensions of accounts.

Short codes and toll-free phone numbers have been built for A2P messaging. Short codes have the ability to send 40 times more SMS per second than long codes, making them highly desirable for sending messages to multiple users simultaneously. Shorter numbers are also more memorable to consumers than long codes and hence can increase campaign retention and engagement.

A2P SMS use cases

Here are some ways businesses have leveraged A2P SMS messaging to grow their customer bases.

Marketing and promotional campaigns

A2P messaging is a powerful resource for advertising and other promotional campaigns. Since short codes and toll-free phone numbers have two-way SMS enabled, businesses can send engaging SMS marketing and promotional campaigns. For example, companies can ensure compliance by having customers opt in for each promotion by responding with a specific keyword. Businesses have also used A2P messaging for campaigns that involve riddles and quizzes. Upon answering questions correctly, subscribers received a specific promotion, such as a coupon.

Companies like CallHub, an SMS and voice broadcasting software company that helps companies collect data from consumers, use Plivo’s two-way SMS service to distribute and monitor marketing campaigns, polling initiatives, and automated replies. Through a user-friendly dashboard, CallHub clients can publish custom messages to their contacts, increase engagement, and generate real-time feedback. Within three months of choosing Plivo, CallHub launched their polling system in 12 countries and gained a 4.6X increase in revenue. Because Plivo does not charge for incoming SMS, they also saved nearly 40% on rates.

Confirmations and alerts

One of the most popular use cases of A2P SMS is to send confirmations and alerts — brief, structured messages that notify a customer of time-sensitive information. For example, an airline could send you an alert that your flight is arriving an hour late. This type of information is urgent, so it’s crucial that alerts be delivered quickly and successfully. This means latency for SMS alerts should be low and the caller ID should be specific to your business. More on this in later sections.

For Zomato, a global food delivery service operating in 23 countries around the world, SMS dependability is essential. An undelivered confirmation is a grave complication that could lead to delays in the order queue. Plivo’s reliable voice and SMS services enabled Zomato to deliver instant order confirmations and delivery notifications, while also lowering their SMS costs around the world.

Two-factor authentication

Another common application of A2P SMS is mobile two-factor authentication (2FA), a security measure that asks users to verify their identity using a password sent to their cell phone. Many people encounter 2FA when they access their bank accounts or log in to applications with sensitive data and files, such as Google or Dropbox.

Confide, a private messaging application that deletes messages after they’re read, uses this two-step SMS verification process to enhance security. Once a user creates an account with Confide and enters their cell phone number, Confide uses Plivo to send an SMS message via short code phone number to deliver a random password. The user then copies that password into the Confide app so that they can complete their registration. This ensures that an individual can have only one account, since most people only have one mobile phone number, and it deters fraudulent signups by making it difficult for a bot to sign up with multiple phone numbers.

While it’s preferable to use a short code number for 2FA, sometimes using a regular 10-digit phone number (a long code) is beneficial. For example, if there’s a spam block in place against short code messaging, your users may never receive your 2FA message. To minimize this risk, it’s best to be able to use a combination of short and long code SMS messaging. Short codes let you know whether your message is delivered successfully, so you can use a short code for the first 2FA message, and follow with a long code message if the initial send fails.

Another prudent approach is to fall back to a voice call if necessary. If text messaging fails within a given amount of time, you can make an automated phone call with the codes spoken to the receiver via a text-to-speech engine. To enable this kind of fallback, be sure your service provider offers both an SMS and a voice API.

Integrating A2P SMS into your business

A2P messaging with short codes can be a powerful business tool, but companies need to be aware of the regulations for mass messaging customers. Even if consumers have opted in to receiving your texts, the messages themselves must adhere to CTIA regulations. Failure to comply can result in you losing your service.

Moreover, not all SMS service providers are created equal. A lot of factors go into the quality of the SMS platform. Three main factors for assessing SMS quality are latency, fixed sender ID, and delivery rates.

SMS latency

Latency for SMS refers to the time a message is initiated to the time it’s received, and it should be only a few seconds. From the end user’s perspective, when a user requests a 2FA authentication code, it should take less than a second to receive the code.

Fixed sender ID

Sender ID is not a factor that most businesses test for, but it’s essential in any two-way SMS campaign. A message’s sender ID has to match the phone number or short code that you want to receive replies on. If the sender ID doesn’t match, then the replies to your campaign will never arrive. Sender IDs can be a problem if your service provider uses aggregators that are not transmitting your text messages directly to the receiving carrier. When that happens, your text message may travel through multiple carriers and multiple countries before arriving at its destination, which can result in incorrect sender IDs — and extended latency.

Delivery rates

Even though many factors that can affect delivery rates are outside of your service provider’s control (recipient’s phone is off, bad reception, etc.), delivery rates for your SMS campaigns should be above 80%. For undelivered messages, your service provider should be able to provide the error code that indicates the reason why the message was not delivered (for example, incorrect destination phone number).

How Plivo helps its customers

Plivo is one of the leading cloud communication providers. We help enterprises and SMBs with their voice and messaging needs.

Every company has multiple applications that can leverage voice calling and text messaging. Plivo is uniquely positioned to offer solutions that match the varying needs of an enterprise while meeting expectations for quality and price. Plivo helps enterprises to differentiate their customer experience and add operational efficiencies as they grow.

Whether you’re a fast-growing organization or a stable business, Plivo can meet your business priorities and needs.

Plivo provides free 24/7 email support to assist our clients in integrating our services into their businesses quickly and seamlessly. To get started with A2P SMS messaging and begin engaging your customers today, contact our sales team.

We’re excited to announce that the Plivo Helper Library for Salesforce is now available. Plivo’s Salesforce integration lets businesses add voice and SMS text messaging capabilities to new Salesforce apps and those already on the AppExchange. The Salesforce Helper Library allows new and existing Salesforce applications to leverage Plivo’s robust carrier network and access 1,600+ networks worldwide and phone numbers in more than 8,000 area codes. You can get free incoming SMS messages in 19+ countries, and experience an average overall savings of 48% compared to other cloud communication services.

We wrote the Plivo Helper Library for Salesforce to include Apex classes that let you interact with Plivo’s voice and SMS APIs to send and receive text messages and make and receive phone calls.

Existing and new Salesforce applications can now leverage Plivo’s APIs to make phone calls and send text messages to their users in over 200 countries. Plivo’s full-featured voice and SMS APIs also allow you to record voice calls for free, initiate bulk calling and texting campaigns, retrieve voice and SMS text message details within Salesforce, and provision phone numbers instantly.

Here are examples of Salesforce applications that currently use Plivo’s voice and SMS APIs:

• Two-way SMS texting for sales and service agents
• Bulk texting for lead nurturing, emergency alerts, loyalty programs, and event reminders
• Click-to-call dialer within the Salesforce CRM
• Delivery of automated text-to-speech info for lead nurturing
• Cloud-based voicemail for sales lines
• Inbound call tracking

We’re pleased to announce a partnership with RCDevs to bring strong SMS authentication solutions to businesses of all sizes. RCDevs is an award-winning security company that specializes in cost-effective enterprise security solutions including two-factor authentication, identity and access management, secure transactions and electronic signatures, and corporate cloud security. Like Plivo, RCDevs believes that high-quality cloud solutions should be accessible to businesses of all sizes. Going forward, we’ll continue to work together to bring strong and affordable authentication technology to customers around the world.

RCDevs’ OpenOTP technology is natively integrated with Plivo’s SMS API to bring reliable one-time password solutions to customers at a low cost. This new integration connects RCDevs’ strong authentication solution with Plivo’s worldwide Tier 1 network. Now, RCDevs customers can reliably and securely deliver one-time passwords through SMS text messages to anyone in the world. The combined solution is easy to set up, reliable, and cost-effective, and with Plivo’s intelligent queuing system, OpenOTP can scale from SMBs to large global enterprises.

“We’re excited to be partnering with RCDevs,” says Venky B., CEO and co-founder of Plivo. “RCDev’s two-factor authentication solutions are already used by global IT, financial, and health care enterprises, and this partnership will help deliver OpenOTP to even more users around the world.”

A few weeks ago, we released an improved set of SMS documentation. Today, we’re following that up with new Browser SDK documentation.

Plivo’s Browser SDK uses WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication), a game-changing technology that allows businesses to build browser-based real-time communication tools without plugins. This new generation of communication tools uses only a data connection to transmit voice-based calls. Specifically, Browser SDK allows you to:

• Make phone calls from a browser: Your browser can act like a phone and make calls to mobile phones, landlines, or SIP-enabled devices, including softphones.
• Receive phone calls on a browser: Receive calls in a browser-based app from any mobile phone, landline, or SIP-enabled device.
• Make phone calls between browsers (browser-to-browser): Users can make phone calls with your browser-based app without the recipient needing to use the same browser, telecom software, or plugins.

Among the new Browser SDK doc pages we’ve added:

• Introduction to Browser SDK: Learn the fundamentals of how our Browser SDK works and what you'll need to build your app.
• Make Outgoing Calls: Make calls directly from any web browser to phone numbers and SIP endpoints.
• Receive Incoming Calls: Receive incoming calls from mobile phones, landlines, or SIP-enabled devices (such as softphones) directly in your browser-based app.
• Create Dynamic SIP Endpoints: Create new endpoints for each new call connection to prevent uninvited calls from calling in on an existing line.

We’ve added a new point of presence (PoP) in Sydney, Australia, that connects directly with a local Tier 1 carrier in Australia. This means that all of our customers in Australia and New Zealand now have automatic access to latency-free voice calls.

Before we added the new PoP, we routed Australian and New Zealand phone calls through our closest PoP, which was in Hong Kong. The extra network hops added 130–150 milliseconds (ms) of latency to each call, delaying the time it took for voice traffic to travel from the speaker’s mouth to the receiver’s ear. The human ear starts to notice voice delays when latency is greater than 250ms. Even though the International Telecommunication Union’s recommendation for most voice applications states that delays should be kept below 150ms, we knew that having a PoP in Australia was critical to giving our customers the best possible voice quality.

Improvements with Australia PoP

Now, all local calls within Australia and New Zealand are kept within the region and routed through our direct connection with a local Australian carrier. This allows for sub-20ms access to our local Australian carrier, which means there’s virtually no latency.

As always, our Voice API comes with a full stack of capabilities to help you build powerful voice calling features for your business:

Security and availability

Our new Australian PoP is equipped with state-of-the-art onsite security and industry-standard network controls including:

• 24/7 surveillance: Dedicated 24/7 state-of-the-art electronic surveillance and physical security measures at all of our server locations.
• Backup encryption: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit encryption used to encrypt all stored backups.
• Network redundancy: Redundant links reroute traffic over backup networks in less than two seconds in case of backbone failover.
• Systems and data redundancy: Multiple instances and redundant servers with active pairs trigger automatically in case of failover.

We’ve had countless customers tell us that they love our product, but fewer people gush about our documentation. As an infrastructure company, having great docs is just as important as boosting call quality and SMS delivery rates. This is why, as part of our focus on making our product the best it can be, we’ve put together a small task force to improve our documentation. We hope that the improvements we’re making help ensure that both novice and seasoned developers have a great experience with Plivo.

We researched and referenced some of the documentation that we like, then prioritized the top six things we want to do:

1. Lower the learning curve: We often take our own knowledge for granted and forget how hard it was for each of us to learn a new platform. To lower that learning curve, we’re breaking down the Getting Started section into more foundational steps.
2. Build a better foundation: By breaking down and simplifying each step, we’re trying build a better understanding for our developer customers. Each tutorial will build on the ones before it.
3. More comprehensive: Telecom is full of technical jargon that’s important for conceptualizing how web and mobile apps interact with telecom infrastructure. Therefore, you’ll see us explain certain concepts in more detail to bring more transparency to the way telecom works.
4. Focus on what’s important: To highlight what’s important, we’ve added note sections to mark up the essential parts to each tutorial.
5. Better code markup: We’ve upgraded our syntax highlighter to include line numbers and support for more languages.
6. More languages: Our Getting Started section is full of examples, but most of them were written in Python. You’ll now see how everything can be done in Ruby, Java, PHP, .NET, and Curl as well.

To start things off, we’ve added more getting started tutorials for SMS. And in the next few weeks, you can expect to see a lot more improvements.

Here are some of new SMS tutorials we’ve added:

• Send a Single SMS Message: Send an outbound SMS text message to any phone number. Use cases: two-factor authentication, notifications, communication apps, etc.
• Receive an SMS Message: Receive SMS text messages in 19 countries around the world. Use cases: ride hailing, delivery coordination, surveys and polling, two-factor authentication, etc.
• Reply to an Incoming SMS Message: Interact with end users using SMS text messages. Use cases: product reviews, dating apps, purchase verification, etc.
• Forward an Incoming SMS Message: Redirect incoming messages to another phone number. Use cases: help desks, sales teams, CRM, etc.
• Handle SMS Delivery Reports: Set up a web server to handle all of your delivery reports. Use cases: customer dashboards, analytics, calculating ROI, etc.
• Forward SMS to Email: Forward SMS text messages on your phone number to your email inbox.