SMS Delivery Status

Today I made a discovery that caught me off guard. Everyone knows one of the major selling points of the BlackBerry handset, and maybe the only selling point these days, is BlackBerry Messenger. BlackBerry Messenger is basically a text messaging service exclusive to BlackBerry users that utilizes a data connection and allows for unlimited length messages. The real special part of BBM is the real-time delivery status feature. This allows users to know if the message was delivered to the recipient and even when it's read. Typically, SMS does not have a delivery status feature.

So returning to my original story, I was correcting a message I sent previously. The message I sent was:

!**

Almost immediately after, I received a text that read:

message ** to 1647####### succeeded.

It turns out Rogers has a delivery status feature with text messages. Just put an ! before the message you're sending and Rogers will let you know if your message was delivered! Keep in mind that when the status message arrives, the message it said delivered will be chopped to 10 characters even though it is referring to your actual full message.

I did a bit more reading about this and found some additional information for other providers. If adding an ! doesn't do the trick, try adding *0# or *N#.eee before your message.