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Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:42 pm
by rmdpi
I wish Sonic could add a feature where our phone numbers could accept SMS text messages like a cellphone does. There are services that do that and I expect Sonic could offer that same feature.

Take a look at these (there are many more):
https://try.eztexting.com/text-to-landline
https://www.zipwhip.com/lp/landline-texting/
https://www.verizon.com/support/text-to-landline-faqs
https://www.slicktext.com/text-to-landline.php

They can somehow route text messages sent to land-line phones to a web interface, probably similar to Google's Messages Web interface where you can view, receive, and send SMS messages from your computer as if they came from your cellphone.
https://support.google.com/messages/ans ... 1075?hl=en

A similar but less desirable feature would be if you could engineer it to route texts that are sent to our land line, to a cell number.

The goal is simply to have one Sonic phone number work for voice, voice mail, and fax (which it already does), plus texting. Could you do that?

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:17 pm
by virtualmike
Comcast/Xfinity offered this at one time, but it appears to have been discontinued.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:20 pm
by rmdpi
I want Sonic to offer that service.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:33 pm
by virtualmike
Dane or someone from Sonic will have to answer that, but I wouldn't suggest holding your breath. Typically, when a big company like Comcast discontinues such a service, it's because few customers are using it.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:02 pm
by rmdpi
I'm hoping Dane will respond -- he is the only one who can answer definitively. Lots of companies are offering the service so there must be some demand. Sonic IS the phone company so it should be easier for them to do it. I don't want the service for phones from other companies, just Sonic.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:39 pm
by ngufra
On the other hand, lots of people have a cell phone and don't care for a land/voip line and are trying very hard to be allowed to not have it and pay for it, its taxes and rental of the ata.

I don't think I miss it. I already have sms on my cell phone and on messages.google.com

One issue is that people will use that number to register phone banking and then anyone at home can authenticate the 2nd factor.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 9:41 am
by rmdpi
I'm not suggesting it would be mandatory for you, just an option, as it is an option to use one of the third-party services I listed. I have a specific need for this and the third-party services are expensive. Please just let Dane respond.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 3:41 pm
by dane
Our focus right now is on scaling up fiber deployment to more communities, and to increasing the capabilities of that fiber-optic service; speed, wifi, etc. And increasing adoption, a critical component.

As you might expect we are seeing less and less interest in voice service and adding new voice features and additional software development and maintenance complexity right now is not something we're interested in. Frankly, figuring out how to sustainably deliver a service where voice isn't bundled is a higher priority for us, and that's a really challenging one economically.

Re: Please add SMS feature to land-lines

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:00 pm
by bjeung
If you notice, pretty much all the services you linked are for businesses. If you are willing to pay the prices posted on those sites to Sonic then I'm sure Dane would be happy to roll that out :). But if you aren't willing to spend $0.25/message or $20+/month for this feature then don't hold your breath. There's no way they are going to offer it free but it's not free.